The privacy issue is first and foremost. This article sheds some light on the events. Some excerpts...
Oskar Lindblom flew to Denver with his Flyers teammates and when they landed, he had received word from doctors at the University of Pennsylvania that he had been
diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. The Swedish left wing was shellshocked and so were his teammates.
“It’s been tough. It’s been a tough week. A 23-year-old kid,” president and general manager Chuck Fletcher said, getting choked up. “It’s been tough for all of us. Today I think was great because he left Denver and probably didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to everybody there before he left. Everyone’s concerned. This transcends hockey. He’s here, getting great care. I suspect our energy level will be pretty good here.”
Fletcher didn’t want to say whether doctors thought they caught it early or not. “I can’t really comment on the process out of respect to Oskar and his privacy rights,” Fletcher said. “I can just tell you it was great to see him today. His teammates care deeply about him and as an organization we’ll do whatever we can to help him. There’s some pretty good energy in the room today and I think that’s in large part to seeing Oskar.”
“Felt that it was important for him and especially important for his teammates to see him. He’s got a tremendous amount of support obviously from his family but from his extended family, the Flyers players, their wives and the coaches and their wives, the great fans we have here in Philly and across the States that are gonna support him. Hockey’s a real strong and real good community and Oskar is a real good and real strong person. He is gonna be around. He’s gonna be back as soon as he possibly can.”
“In the last week since Denver, since we found out that day we arrived in Denver, this was the best day internally with how we feel, to see (Lindblom) smiling,” Vigneault said. “Just to tell you a little bit — I don’t know if TK shared this with you — just to tell you the type of person Oskar is, when we got back here, with everything going on, he texted TK to find out how his head was going because of the concussion. That’s just the type of young man we have. Strong. He’s like hockey community. He’s gonna have a lot of support and he’s gonna get through this.”
