Filip Lindberg is heading home.
Lindberg, now a former Penguins goaltending prospect, signed a two-year contract with the club TPS in the Finnish Liiga on Friday. Lindberg was set to become a restricted free agent this summer. The Penguins could still make a qualifying offer and retain Lindberg's North American rights, but that would only be until he is age 27. Given that he is 24 years old now and signed a two-year deal, it would be unlikely that retaining his rights would amount to anything.
This will be Lindberg's first time playing in the top professional league of his native Finland. Lindberg came up through the Espoo club's youth system, but moved to North America for the 2018-19 season to play for UMass for three seasons.
Lindberg was originally a seventh-round pick of the Wild in 2019, but opted to not sign with Minnesota and become a free agent in 2021. He was a coveted free agent at the time, and signed a two-year entry-level contract with the Penguins in the summer of 2021.
Lindberg's two years with the Penguins were marred by multiple unrelated long-term injuries.
Lindberg's professional career with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton got off to a hot start in his rookie 2021-22 season with a .915 save percentage and a 2.76 goals-against average in seven games. It was midway through that seventh game that he suffered an ankle injury that required surgery and proved to be season-ending.
Lindberg was in and out of Wilkes-Barre's lineup with various ailments this season, two of which were substantial. He suffered a lower-body injury on Dec. 21 that had him sidelined until Jan. 14, and then he suffered an upper-body on Feb. 11 that caused him to miss the last two months of the season.
When Lindberg was healthy this season, he wasn't great. Through 19 games, he recorded a .896 save percentage and a 3.13 goals-against average. That's despite most of his games coming early in Wilkes-Barre's season, when the team in front of him was largely much stronger and playing much better than it did in the second half of the year.
I wrote a month ago that the signing of Joel Blomqvist to an entry-level contract could mean the end of Lindberg's time in the Penguins' organization. While it's not a given yet that Blomqvist will be in the AHL next season, the Penguins signing him a full year before his signing rights were set to expire, that's an indication that there's a good chance that Blomqvist will make the move to North America this season. That is his desire, as he told me after his Finnish team's season ended. With Taylor Gauthier putting together a strong rookie campaign this season for Wilkes-Barre with a .907 save percentage and a 2.71 goals-against average, he deserves to play in Wilkes-Barre next season, too.
Including Russian prospect Sergei Murashov on the list, Lindberg's inability to stay healthy over these two seasons had him slip down the depth chart, and was likely seen as the fourth-best goaltending prospect of the list of four.