Valtteri Filppula: “I’ve been able to play for a long time and have some success as well”

Two years ago, Valtteri Filppula became a member of the Triple Gold Club when he captained Finland to gold medals at the Olympics and World Championship just three months apart. Previously, he’d won the Stanley Cup as a member of the Detroit Red Wings in 2007-08.

This past season, at 39 years of age, he added a Champions Hockey League title to his list of achievements and he wasn’t just along for the ride – Filppula recorded 10 points in 13 games during the pan-European competition.

All of that made him a front-runner for the Warrior Career Excellence Award and on Tuesday in Prague, he won it at the Fenix Outdoors European Hockey Awards. Filppula is the seventh recipient of the award, joining Riikka Välilä, Michael Wolf, Joel Lundqvist, Jaromír Jágr and Andres Ambühl – a pretty special group of European hockey warriors.

“Oh, for sure,” Filppula agreed. “It’s definitely a big honor and I’m proud to be able to be part of that list. I think it’s a testament to being able to do something right for a long period of time. That’s probably what I’m most proud of about my career – that I’ve been able to play for a long time and have some success as well.”

When did you find out that you’d won?
“It was maybe a few weeks after the season that I found out I was nominated, but I didn’t know the result until a couple of weeks after that.”

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You’ve just finished three years playing for Genève-Servette. In that time, the team won it’s first national title in over 100 years and then won the Champions Hockey League. How was that experience?
“It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed playing there and we had a good team all three years. The first year we had a chance but we weren’t quite there yet. But we added some important players and had a good run – we won the championship and then won the CHL. It was great that this late in my career I was able to win something. That was special.”

You were one of five Finns on that team this past season. Now they’ve just signed Markus Granlund. Why do so many Finns end up there?
“That’s a good question. For me … my brother (Ilari) played in Switzerland and always had a lot of good things to say about it, so I wanted to go somewhere in Switzerland but didn’t really know the cities well. I talked to Geneva and was really happy with how it sounded. I also talked to some other Finns and we had a good group there. It was a lot of the same guys who were with the national team too, so of course we had a bit of chemistry from that and it worked out pretty well.”

Is there a chance you’ll go back there or will it be somewhere else?
“I don’t have a contract right now. I’m just figuring out what to do. I’ll probably wait until a little later this summer before I make up my mind.”

Jonathan Lekkerimäki won the Young Player of the Year award. Have you had a chance to speak to him here?
“No, not yet. Just now very quickly to say congrats. I don’t know too much about his career but I did see a bit of him during the World Juniors. Hopefully, he stays healthy and has a long career in the NHL.”