Hockey is “second” on Pascal Dupuis mind as doctors are unsure at this point if he’ll ever play again

For Pascal Dupuis dealing with his second blood clot in less than a year, hockey is second on his mind and everyone’s mind.

“Moving forward the biggest and most important thing is the well being of Pascal Dupuis,” Associate GM Jason Botterill said.

Dupuis blood clot in his knee that was found in January 2014, has now spread to his lung. Dupuis on Monday complained of some mild chest discomfort and was immediately checked by doctors.

“Felt same way as before, just didn’t want to believe it,” Dupuis said of the blood clot.

Dupuis is lucky the Penguins caught the situation when they did. “Extremely important, can be life threatening,” Dr. Vyas said of Dupuis situation.

The scary part for Dupuis is doctors have no answers at this point if he’ll ever be able to play again.

“We don’t have an answer for that at this time,” Dr. Vyas said. Dupuis noted he also can’t answer that at this time. “Kind of hard for me to answer that right now,” Dupuis said.

When it comes to his career, hockey is second on Dupuis mind. “Hockey is definitely second on my mind right now,” Dupuis said.

Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang, Marc Andre Fleury, Chris Kunitz and Evgeni Malkin were among the players in attendance for the Dupuis press conference showing him support.

“We just heard about this in very short time period, ” head coach Mike Johnston said. “This is really new news, very tough news,”Johnston said.

Johnston called Dupuis a “inspirational leader” in the room.

Moving forward the Penguins will place Dupuis on LTIR and like last season get cap relief.

“We’ll get some cap flexibility,” Botterill said.

The Penguins staff will be meeting later this afternoon when Jim Rutherford arrives from Toronto where he was for the GM meetings. Jayson Megna is likely to be called up, though, the Penguins could continue to just roll 12 forwards.