Earlier in May, Oskar Lindblom signed with Swedish club Brynäs IF after seven seasons in North America. He spent almost all of the first six campaigns in the NHL, mostly with the Philadelphia Flyers before signing as a free agent with the San Jose Sharks in the summer of 2022.

After a full season with the Sharks where he played 73 games, producing 15 points, things went badly right from training camp in 2023-24, Lindblom told Linnea Andersson of Swedish website hockeynews.se.

“I guess it didn’t quite go the way I wanted – I was sent down immediately,” said Lindblom. “It felt like they didn’t really want me there at all.”

After a month of playing for the San Jose Barracuda – the Sharks’ AHL farm team – Lindblom was called up in November. His first NHL game of the season – a 5-0 road loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on November 11 – would also be his last, as Lindblom suffered a broken foot.

Lindblom eventually recovered and made his way back into the Barracudas lineup, but the foot injury and a bout with glandular fever limited him to 41 AHL games … and just the one in the NHL.

“It’s easy to complain about (all of that, but) I still could have done better than I did.”

Through it all, Lindblom was apparently pining to return to Sweden and his youth club, Brynäs.

“We have been talking to him since November,” Brynäs sports director Johan Alcén said in April. “We've been banking on him but he needs to make a choice. We stand with open arms if he wants to go home, he is welcome here whenever he wants.”

A fifth-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Flyers in 2014, Lindblom made the team’s roster during the 2017-18 season and got Flyers fans excited with his style of play, even drawing comparisons to Peter Forsberg. However, in December 2019, Lindblom was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. Lindblom completed his treatment in the summer of 2020, in time to join the Flyers for the “bubble” playoffs in Toronto.

Lindblom was a finalist for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy two years in a row, winning the award for “perseverance and dedication to hockey” after the 2020-21 season. However, just a year later, the Flyers bought out his contract.

“It’s always what I dreamed of since I was little, then getting to do seven years over there and being able to play against the best players and with the best players has been incredibly fun,” said Lindblom. “I got to live in Philly for five years and we felt at home in that city, but unfortunately, it didn’t turn out the we wanted there either.”

Lindblom recorded 112 points in 337 NHL regular-season games. He was held pointless in six playoff games.

He admitted that “when I look back after my career, I will probably be very proud of what I did over there.”

Lindblom is joining a Brynäs team that has just returned to the top-tier Swedish Hockey League after a year away. Among his teammates next season will be former Anaheim Duck Jakob Silfverberg and 19-year-old St. Louis Blues prospect Theo Lindstein.