Former Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman John Klingberg announced his retirement from professional hockey at 34 years old.
John Klingberg announced his retirement from professional hockey on Friday, closing a 12-season NHL career that included a brief, injury-shortened stop in Toronto.
The 34-year-old Swede finished with 700 regular-season games, 92 goals and 351 assists for 443 points across six organizations. The bulk of that production came in Dallas, where he spent eight seasons after being selected in the fifth round in 2010. He later bounced from Anaheim to Minnesota, Toronto, Edmonton and San Jose. Hip problems followed him through the later years. After one more season with the Sharks, 10 goals and 27 points in 56 games, Klingberg decided his body would no longer let him play the way he wanted.
His Maple Leafs chapter lasted 14 games.
Toronto signed him on July 1, 2023, to a one-year, $4.15-million deal as general manager Brad Treliving looked for a right-shot puck-mover who could run a power play and join the rush. Klingberg opened with five assists in his first six games. The production stopped. He went scoreless in the next nine appearances, and the defensive results were poor. On Nov. 23, the Leafs placed him on long-term injured reserve. Treliving later revealed the hip issue dated to an October road trip in Florida and that Klingberg had been playing through it for weeks. Surgery followed in December. He did not play again for Toronto.
That was the extent of his Leafs tenure: a short look at a player whose game had always been built on skating, vision and offensive instincts rather than shutdown defence. In his prime with Dallas, he posted five straight 40-point seasons, including a career-high 67 points in 2017-18, made an All-Star Game and twice finished sixth in Norris Trophy voting. He helped the Stars reach the 2020 Stanley Cup Final and finished second on the team in playoff scoring that spring. Those traits — the ability to beat a forechecker, find a seam and join the attack, were what Toronto hoped to recapture. The hips never allowed it.
Klingberg later recovered enough to play 11 regular-season games and 19 playoff games for Edmonton in 2024-25, including four in the Stanley Cup Final, before finishing in San Jose.
He leaves the game with two World Championship gold medals, a junior world title and 700 NHL games are the numbers that will travel with him. In Toronto, he is remembered as a veteran defenseman whose body could not keep pace with the demands of a contending roster.
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