The Pittsburgh Penguins placed goaltender Filip Larsson on unconditional waivers for the purposes of a contract termination on Tuesday.
Should no other team claim him by 2 p.m. Wednesday, he will be free to sign elsewhere.
Currently assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League (AHL), Larsson is in the final year of a two-year two-way contract with a salary cap hit of $775,000.
After a strong 2024-25 season with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, the 27-year-old Larsson has played relatively little during the ongoing campaign as he has been stuck behind promising goaltending prospects Joel Blomqvist and Sergei Murashov.
Limited to nine games this season, Larsson has a 3-2-1 record, a 3.51 goals-against average and an .876 save percentage.
His most recent game came Jan. 3 during a 6-0 road loss to the Syracuse Crunch when he relieved a starting Murashov.
In December, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton coach Kirk MacDonald said the left-catching Larsson had taken a “back seat” to Blomqvist and Murashov.
The Penguins were intrigued with the Swedish-born Larsson after he put together a strong 2023-24 season skating for Leksands IF of the Swedish Hockey League. In 28 games that season, he had a 19-9-0 record, a 1.93 goals- against average, a .920 save percentage and five shutouts.
That led Penguins management to extend a fairly lucrative contract offer to him in April of 2024, at least as two-way deals are concerned. (He is compensated $500,000 if he is on the AHL club this season.)
In the late 2010s, Larsson had previously played in North America at the junior level with the United States Hockey League’s Tri-City Storm as well as in the NCAA ranks with Denver. And as a prospect with the Detroit Red Wings, he skated with the Grand Rapids Griffins of the AHL and the Toledo Walleye of the ECHL.
With the pandemic largely shutting down hockey in North America in 2020, Larsson returned to Sweden and played for a handful of teams there before joining the Penguins.
“I just felt like it was a great opportunity for me to come back (to North America),” Larsson said last April. “And honestly, it was just the first team that was interested, and I felt like I wanted to make a run again. It felt good coming here.”
Larsson was arguably Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s top goaltender during the 2024-25 season. In 26 contests, he had a 12-9-3 record, a 2.84 goals-against average, a .910 save percentage and a team-leading five shutouts. His success helped the club qualify for the AHL’s postseason.
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“I had some bad games, too, but I know I can always bounce back and know what I’m good at,” Larsson said last April. “I just feel good within myself. I know what I can do. We have a really good team as well. Shutouts, it’s fun but it’s also a team performance.”
Aside from a handful of preseason appearances over two years, Larsson never skated for the NHL Penguins.
Including Larsson, the Penguins currently have 47 players under contract for the ongoing season. The NHL’s limit is 50 contracts.
