Penguins goaltender Filip Lindberg eager for 1st game in 10 months

Saturday’s rookie tournament game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins at LECOM Harborcenter in Buffalo is hardly a major affair.

It’s a scrimmage between prospects, the majority of whom will spend the 2022-23 season in the American Hockey League.

But for Filip Lindberg, it could represent a significant milestone.

After all, it will be the first time he’s played hockey in any competitive sense in nearly a year.

“If I’m playing (Saturday), obviously, it’s going to feel great,” Lindberg said Friday after practice during the Penguins’ rookie camp in Cranberry. “I feel excited. I would treat it like a normal game.”

The past 10 months have been far from normal for Lindberg.

A left ankle injury that required surgery has kept him sidelined since mid-November and largely derailed his professional existence just when it was beginning with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

During a 2-1 home win against the Charlotte Checkers on Nov. 12, Lindberg left the contest and never came back.

For the season.

What followed was surgery and a lengthy rehabilitation process that lingered into the summer. Even during the team’s prospect development camp this past July, team staffers limited his work in practices and scrimmages.

“After it happened, I was rehabbing for a long time,” the 23-year-old native of Finland said. “Then I had to undergo surgery. After I got cleared, I was rehabbing right away. I’d say it was pretty much the beginning of the summer when I started doing stuff normally again. … When I got home after the season was over, that was when I started working out and skating and doing my (training) and stuff like that normally. That’s when life started feeling normal again.”

Life was going pretty well when Lindberg made his professional debut last season. Signed out of the University of Massachusetts as a college free agent in July of 2021, Lindberg got off to a pretty strong start with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. In seven games, he had a 4-2-0 record, a 2.76 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage. He was named the AHL’s top goaltender in October.

“Of course it’s frustrating,” Lindberg said. “We got off to a good start as a team. We all played well. For me personally, I felt good out there. Sometimes, it’s a part of sports. It’s bad luck, and you can’t do anything about it. You’ve got to deal with it, move forward and get back in the game.”

“You could see every day that he was hurt and he was out, he was not real happy about it,” Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins assistant coach Kevin Porter said. “He handled it well, definitely. But you could tell he wanted to be in the net. He just wants to play hockey. He’s really excited to get (training) camp started and (play in Saturday’s game).”

Lindberg declined to get into specifics as far as the nature of the injury. But he acknowledged it completely derailed his style of play, which relies on speed and agility given his lithe presence (6-foot, 180 pounds).

“What happened to me with my ankle, it affected my whole game,” Lindberg said. “I wasn’t able to perform at all. It changed agility, speed, pretty much all those aspects of my game. That’s why it had to be fixed.”

Lindberg is still in the embryonic stages of his development, especially considering the severity of his malady. He likely will play the bulk of the 2022-23 campaign with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, competing with veteran Dustin Tokarski for playing time.

Just having an opportunity to do that resonates with him.

“I’d say it was tough, both mentally and physically,” Lindberg said. “Probably tougher mentally because we had a good start. I had a pretty good start, too. I was excited about pro hockey like everyone is when they get in that world. It was really tough. I had a lot of support from staff, coaches, teammates, family, friends. I’m really thankful they helped me get through it.

“It’s not easy being out for 10 months.”

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