- Filip Hallander says he is 100 percent healthy after a blood clot and a lung issue wiped out his season
- The Penguins forward has one medical test left before he reports to training camp
- Read below for Hallander on the year he thought had ended his career
Filip Hallander spent a chunk of last season wondering whether his hockey career was already finished.
The Penguins forward was asked about the year that pulled him off the ice twice, first with a blood clot in his leg and then with something doctors found in one of his lungs. Hallander told Swedish paper ST, in comments relayed by Andreas Larsson of Hockeysverige, that the second diagnosis was the one that got to him.
“Right there and then I just thought, damn, maybe there won’t be any more hockey for me,” Hallander said in comments translated from Swedish.
Pittsburgh announced the clot on Nov. 7, 2025, and ruled him out a minimum of three months.
He was back skating by mid-February and went to AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on a conditioning loan. Three games in, something felt off again.
“I played a few games and had some aches. So we ran new tests as a precaution. Some of the values were not quite right and they wanted to be safe rather than sorry. So I went back to Pittsburgh and did more tests, and that is when we found something in the lung,” Hallander said.
Catch Hallander back in February, talking about the first comeback before any of the lung trouble surfaced:
Now 26, Hallander says he is all the way healthy. One test remains once he lands in Pittsburgh, since he has been off his medication for a while, and then it is a month of hard training before camp opens.
He was blunt about what he wants out of that camp.
“My goal is to make the team and be a key player. After everything I have been through this past year, I have a hard time seeing anyone more motivated than me to step out on the ice,” Hallander said.
These days he is home in Sundsvall, skating with Timra IK. That is the club he put up 26 goals and 53 points for in 51 games in 2024-25 before heading back to North America.
The math in Pittsburgh is not simple. Hallander is in the final year of a deal carrying an $850K cap hit, he is waiver-eligible, and the Penguins are already stacking 18 forwards into 13 roster spots.
His 13 games last season were still the most he has played in any NHL year, and his lone goal was a shorthanded game-winner. Hallander wants a much bigger number than 13 this time.
