San Jose Sharks
Klingberg Candid About Hip Injury History, Feels Better Now Than He Has in Years

John Klingberg is hungry to prove himself again.
Seven years ago, a 25-year-old Klingberg was perhaps on his way to a Hall of Fame career, two top-six Norris Trophy finishes already on his resume. The 6-foot-2 right-hander was also coming off a 67-point campaign, still a career-high.
Since then, it’s been some up, but more down for Klingberg, as hip problems that he’s had since he was 19 got increasingly worse.
Over the last two seasons, the Swede has played just 25 regular season games.
But a Dec. 2023 hip resurfacing surgery has Klingberg feeling healthier than ever, which is why the San Jose Sharks rolled the dice on him with a one-year, $4 million pact on Jul. 1.
“Coming to San Jose, there’s a big opportunity for me to get better and prove that I can still play hockey and play big minutes as well,” Klingberg told local media last Wednesday.
The new San Jose Sharks defenseman, who’s projected to run the power play, talked openly about his injury history.
John Klingberg, on how his hips felt this season:
I want to say it’s good enough to be good, but there is, for sure, room for it to get better.
I think when I signed with Edmonton coming back, I knew it was going to be a process. I don’t think the 4 Nations break helped— coming back and playing five games and then a two-week long break—obviously, I was still skating, but at that time, I would have loved to just keep playing, but that didn’t happen.
Then, as we started up after the 4 Nations in the spring, I ended up with an ankle infection—I took a shot off the ankle, and it got infected—so I started missing time from that too.
As we got into the playoffs and I started playing, I really felt like game by game, but especially week by week, it just started to get better and better, and I started to feel more comfortable with my new hips. It’s obviously very different from it was in the past, but that’s the exciting thing. I felt like it just got better and better throughout the playoffs, and who knows, with a with a fully healthy summer here where I’m starting to work out normally again instead of just doing rehab and then starting skating, hopefully here pretty soon, back home in Sweden and getting ready, I feel like it’s just going to continue to get better.
Klingberg, on how his hip issues have progressed over the years:
I had my first double hip surgery when I was 19, when I played back home in Sweden. Ultimately, that didn’t really help, and we ended up doing the same surgery again when I was 21, so that probably wasn’t ideal, but that was just the reality at that time. I had two double hip surgeries before I moved over to North America.
I was playing and I could still feel like it was bothering me, but eventually you just knew that having two double hip surgeries and trying to get more motion, it’s ultimately going to break down and create a lot of arthritis in your hips and create less movement and stuff like that.
It’s been there my entire professional hockey life, really, but over the last—I would say, probably four or five years—it’s been a grind. I’ve been trying to do everything that I can to be able to be the player I know I can be out there, but at the end of the day, when I felt like I really couldn’t move anymore, it was just time to do it, and unfortunately, it happened the way it happened.
At the end of the day, I just felt like if I’m going to play this game and I can’t play the way I can, I have to do this. I did a lot of research with it too, I talked to Patrick Kane and Nicklas Backstrom, and those guys, and I’ve had great feedback. I’ve been talking to the surgeon in New York as well, he’s been doing a lot of different pro athletes. It’s still a pretty fresh surgery that you do, but I do feel like it’s been a lot better already than it’s been in the past, but it’s still a lot to get used to—it’s metal in your hips now, so it’s different for sure.
Like I said, it’s just continuing to get better and better. The exciting thing, too, is, after the playoff run, when you’re done, and you start relaxing, in the past, when I’ve done that, it’s almost like the hips have gotten worse, but over this past week, since we lost in the Final, it’s just continuing to feeling a lot better and better, just living a normal life. That’s the exciting thing, I feel like it’s really trending in the right direction here.
Klingberg, on whether it’s fair to say this is the best he’s felt in 5-10 years:
I would say so. Like I said, it’s a learning process—still getting used to everything, and some small bumps here and there—but that’s something that every professional athlete is dealing with, and that’s the exciting thing. I have three months here now to make it even better, and then I’m going to play a full season and see how it feels. I’m pretty confident that this is just going to continue to get better and better.
Klingberg, on the last time he was able to have a full summer of training:
Probably like 5 or 6 years ago, I would say.
It is exciting. I mean, it’s still going to be a lot of these small things that you do to stay on top of the hips, but then being able to actually start building up and training for power, which you need on the ice and and skating the way you want to as well, it’s exciting.
Klingberg, on if there was ever a “turning point” in his recovery during the playoffs:
It actually happened right before the playoffs. The hips were up and down a little bit, and then I had the ankle infection, and it was kind of like, “Okay, is this really happening?”
For some reason, I don’t know why, but when I took that time off for my ankle—because I couldn’t really do anything, and I had different meds to help with the infection, but also the swelling on the ankle—it started feeling a lot better in the hips, too.
As I was cleared and good to go skating again, I just felt like I had a different stride. As soon as you feel that, because you’re a perfectionist, it was almost like the confidence of just it just clicked, like, “Oh, this is feeling really good. I feel like I can skate the way I expect myself to skate.” That was kind of where I was like, “Okay, this is maybe turning the corner right now.”
It was right before the playoffs, but then game by game and series by series, it just continued to get better. Then being able to play in the Stanley Cup Final, knowing that you almost missed two full years and then jumping right into plays and being able to to battle on that level was, for sure, very exciting for me.
Klingberg, on whether he sees this chance with the San Jose Sharks as a big step to get his career back on track:
Yes, for sure.
I mean, you can look at it that way, but at that time, I was a lot younger, I’m a lot older now.
What I think I learned throughout these past few years, when I’ve been bumping around on different teams and the body has been some kind of a mess, I feel like I gained a lot of experience in knowing that I can play a different game too, because it was frustrating, for sure, when it just started to continue to get worse that I wasn’t able to play the game or play the game how I wanted to play the game. I had to learn and adapt to how to play a little bit differently.
Moving forward, knowing that I had to play a different way when I was injured, it helped a lot knowing now that when I’m healthy and I feel a lot better, I can play the game that I want to, but I can also lean back and know that I don’t have to try to create all the time—I just [got] more experience with my own game, I can just let the game come to me and and not trying to chase it down.
Watch the full interview here
It’d be awesome for him to get his career back on track here. Win win.
My only advice to him is to get that tooth plugged up!
Already done. He had a fresh grille in the playoffs with Edm.
He looked great during the playoffs. He won’t have nearly as much help this season so here’s hoping he keeps getting healthier and is our top pairing guy for the full season.