The Penguins officially locked up one of their restricted free agents on Saturday morning.
The Penguins signed forward prospect Kasper Bjorkqvist to a one-year, two-way contract for the 2021-22 season, general manager Ron Hextall announced.
The contract carries a cap hit of $750,000 at the NHL level. He is exempt from waivers for the start of next season, and will again be a restricted free agent when the contract expires next summer.
"Kasper is an honest, responsible two-way player who is very coachable and understands the game well," assistant general manager Patrik Allvin said in a statement. "We felt that it was important for Kasper to play in Finland last year after his injuries, and he found a lot of success there, which was good for his development. He has all of the intangibles to develop into an NHL player."
Bjorkqvist is capable of playing both wings, but primarily plays left wing as a left-handed shot. He's 6 foot 1 and 214 pounds.
Bjorkqvist, 24, will look to play his first full professional season in North America next season. Bjorkqvist turned pro in the 2019-20 season, but tore his ACL after six games after a collision with a teammate in practice, leading to surgery and the end of his season. I spoke with Penguins skills coach Ty Hennes, who works with injured Penguins players during their rehab, and he spoke very highly of Bjorkqvist's work ethic during that process.
"Kasper is the most eager, attentive, hungry player to get better on the ice and off the ice. He's dialed in and hungry for more." Hennes told me. "A skill series usually takes three, four days for a guy to get comfortable. He spends so much time on it. You have to be two steps ahead of Kasper, because you didn't know if it would be tomorrow or two days from now before he's calling asking for something more."
He began the 2020-21 season in his native Finland in the top league with the club KooKoo, and Bjorkqvist and the team came to the mutual decision to let him play the full Liiga season, a move aimed at getting him the most possible playing time. He won the league's rookie scoring title with 11 goals and 15 assists in 44 games.
"I'm very grateful for the fact that I was able to go over there and play," Bjorkqvist told me after the end of the Liiga season. "I needed the games after last year's injury, playing just six games last year. At the time when I committing to playing there, there was a lot of uncertainty in terms of the season here. In terms of what the teams over there wanted, they wanted me to play the full season."
Bjorkqvist returned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton after KooKoo was eliminated from the postseason and finished out the year in the AHL, playing out the final five games of Wilkes-Barre's season.
After Bjorkqvist returned, Wilkes-Barre head coach J.D. Forrest told me that "you can see his strength and his smarts out there," and noted that he picked up on some improvements in Bjorkqvist's game with his hands and work in tight spaces from that extra skill work as a result of his time spent injured.
After one of those games, I asked teammate Anthony Angello what his impressions were of Bjorkqvist's game since returning from Finland.
"He's got exceptional speed," Angello said. "He's definitely strong in the corners and on the puck."
Bjorkqvist scored one goal in his return to Wilkes-Barre this past season, the overtime winner over Lehigh Valley in the penultimate game of the season. He knocked in the loose puck after Jordy Bellerive carried the puck up ice:
We asked Penguins director of player development Scott Young about Bjorkqvist's season on an episode of our 66 to 87 podcast last week.
"When he got back over to Wilkes here, I think it was important for him to get back over to readjust because -- not that he's played over in Finland a lot because he was at Providence College -- but it is a different game," Young said. "And you know, he got back to his North American habits pretty quickly. But the first few games in Wilkes you could tell it was an adjustment coming from the big sheet over there in Europe. And once he got going and started to feel much more adjusted -- and never mind all the COVID quarantines he had to go through, I think he had to go through like six different ones, which is kind of crazy -- but he ended up playing a good hard physical game. And that's something we definitely want to see from him. And I think the skill work that he worked on over in Finland really did help him."
Player development coach Tom Kostopoulos told us on another episode that he thinks Kostopoulos could push NHL time next season.
"He's a guy that I assume next season will be fighting for a spot in Pittsburgh," Kostopoulos said. "He's such a responsible player, and he works so hard. He's a tremendous athlete. I think he'll be knocking on the door."