Linköping has a number of expiring contracts after this season and on the forward side Remi Elie, Broc Little and Patrick Russel’s contracts expire, among others. Considering that it has not improved either in terms of games or results during the autumn, the club is also planning to change some things for next season.
Now Hockeynews can reveal that Linköping is working on signing Jakob Lilja back. The 31-year-old son of Malmö, who has a past in LHC, has spent the last three seasons playing in the Swiss top league where he represented Ambrí-Piotta and Fribourg-Gottéron.
According to sources for Hockeynews, Linköping has also been in Switzerland and scouted Lilja several times during the autumn. The club sees Lilja as a dream signing and wants to be involved in arguing about his signature when the contract expires down in Switzerland this spring.
When we reach LHC’s sports manager Peter Jakobsson, he is few in number:
– We focus on playing hockey here and now. Players who are not ours are nothing we comment on now. Jakob has played in Linköping once before and has changed clubs in Switzerland recently. He is a good hockey player, but I have nothing more to say.
Is there a dialogue between you?
– It is nothing that I comment on.
The forward started this season weakly in Ambrí-Piotta with just one point in eleven games, but has improved significantly since the switch of clubs, accounting for six points in eleven games since then.
Jakob Lilja also has a past in Russian Dynamo Moscow in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but has previously told about the crux of getting out of the contract. During the summer of 2022, Lilja and his agent tried to get out of the agreement, without success.
– I personally cannot afford to buy myself out of this. I don’t have the financial opportunity. It is simply more money than I own, said Lilja in an interview with The Express 2022.
Lilja’s background in the KHL is not something that Jakobsson wants to comment on at the moment.
– I have no comment on that either. It’s been a long time, it’s nothing we talk about. It happened a long time ago, so it’s not something we think about or attach any importance to at this point.
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