Bruins Hampus Lindholm on the fire in Sweden that burned down his home
The dinner plans – and a large part of Lindholm’s life – went up in smoke on August 22. Late in the morning, he had finished his workout, was filling the gas tank and thinking about lunch when his mother, Petra, called him. The fire company reported smoke at his off-season home, a 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom waterfront pad.
Lindholm ran over to find disaster.
A fire tore through his home. The windows and rooms were obscured by smoke. Flames danced and grew, feeding on oxygen from the sea breeze and the air trapped on his attic. During an agonizing 12 hours that followed, almost everything inside the house would be destroyed.
The local fire brigade in Höganäs had to call in reinforcements from nearby Ängelholm, Helsingborg and Landskrona. Lindholm saw around 100 rescue workers “working hard” to tame the fire.
“The firefighters were there quickly,” Lindholm said, recounting the incident in the Bruins’ locker room last week. “I got into that mode of telling the firefighters, how can I help them?
“But afterwards you can’t do much. You just stand there and watch your house burn.”
Lindholm bought the place four years ago with the hope of renovating it into a summer paradise. By the time of his March 2022 trade from the Ducks to the Bruins, it had become his paradise. It had a veranda overlooking the Öresund, the waterway between southwestern Sweden and northeastern Denmark. He enjoyed sitting and listening to the birds while drinking his morning coffee, and getting out on the water during the sunny Swedish evenings.
He couldn’t salvage much from the wreckage – just a few metal objects. He lost “only material things,” he said, downplaying the loss of the home.
“When it happened, it was traumatic,” Lindholm said. “The hard part was having friends calling and checking on you. That was the more emotional part of it all. I’m not an emotional guy, but it took me a bit. People were scared of me.”
The local police, Aftonbladet reported, launched an investigation into arson. A city official, Jonas Hellsten, tells another news magazine, Helsingborgs Dagblad, that the fire probably started in a side building next to the house. Lindholm thinks the same.
“I had batteries that charged surfboards,” he said.
He owns a pair of Lift e-foil surfboards, which lift the rider out of the water with an electric propeller. The driver steers and controls the throttle with a hand-held remote control, about the size of a video camera. They sell for over $10,000. Holding his hands apart, Lindholm described their lithium batteries as roughly the size of a football.
The Lift company, according to its website, is based in Puerto Rico and has sold more than 10,000 e-foils worldwide since the design of a prototype in 2015. A message seeking comment was not returned at the time of publication.
“Fortunately, no one was there,” Lindholm said. “Fortunately it was the middle of the day.”
Lindholm believes that something good will come of it. He finds reason for optimism.
“My shirts I’ve collected over the years,” he said, “I sent them off a few weeks before for framing.”
His childhood stuff? “My parents have all that.”
One of the first operations, Lindholm said, was judiciously snatching a rucksack that looked important. It sure was: his passport and travel documents were inside.
Also, his family’s puppy — “a little wiener,” 4-year-old Nalva — had been staying with him but was off site that day.
Call him Lucky Lindy.
“I’m positive about it,” said Lindholm. “I’m usually pretty good at not caring about it. It was nice because you can see what really matters to you. I think you have a bit of an awakening that material things don’t matter, it’s the people .”
It’s about the “soul of the home,” he said, rather than his lost possessions. “The place is more special to me, than maybe that couch on which I watched so many movies,” he added. “It will be rebuilt.”
Lindholm’s father, Jonas, and his Swedish agent, Johan Finnström (he works with Claude Lemieux in North America), will deal with the insurance company and contractors, while Lindholm worries about filling the temporary vacancy of a Charlie McAvoy-less Boston blue line.
Hockey, Lindholm said, has been a haven for him lately.
A day after the fire, he was scheduled to be in Paris for the NHL’s European Player Media Days. He took a mad trip to a clothing store, picked out a white shirt and charcoal suit, and flew to France for a long day of interviews.
“It had been such a crazy day,” Lindholm said, “it was kind of nice – they said they wouldn’t get the insurance company to come until [a week later]. Just sitting there at home, that would be depressing. You have to get out and do things, be active.
“You’ve been in the league long enough, I’m good at separating hockey from personal relationships. You can’t let that affect you. I was happy to get away and focus on hockey for a few days.”
The Bruins posted video of Lindholm, happily acting. “Bonjour Bruins fans!” he said in a selfie the team posted on Twitter. “Here in Paris for the NHL media tour. I don’t know if there are any B’s fans here in Paris right now, but if so, I’ll find you.”
Matt Porter can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @mattyports.