Former Red Wing Valterri Filppula will play this season for Jokerit in Finland's second-tier Mestis league
After 20 years of playing professional hockey, Valterri Filppula is headed back to where it all started. This time, he's on a mission to restore his old team to its former glory.
According to a report by Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, Filppula will play for Jokerit next season, a team in Finland's capital Helsinki that has gone through significant financial and logistical strife in the past three seasons.
Filppula and Jokerit will play 2024-25 in the second-tier Mestis. He will also be a co-owner of the team once he's done playing, joining an ownership group full of NHL alumni.
Way back in the early 2000s, Filppula was a force for Jokerit before joining the Red Wings system. He scored more than a point per game in both the Finnish U18 and U20 leagues as a prospect, debuting with the club's senior team at 19 years old. In his rookie season with Jokerit, Filppula notched 18 points in 49 games, the highest total of any U20 player that season. He remained an elite player in 2004-05, when he led his age group with 30 points in 55 games amid a surge of NHL talent in the league due to the NHL lockout.
This success earned him an entry-level contract with Detroit, where he played 591 of his 1,056 career games and won the 2008 Stanley Cup. That Stanley Cup, plus gold medals at the 2022 World Championship and Winter Olympics made him the first ever Finn to join the illustrious Triple Gold Club.
It's this kind of pedigree that could really help Jokerit. While Filppula spent 16 years in the NHL, his former club took a decline. In 2014, Jokerit moved from the Finnish Liiga to the Russian KHL, where it saw mild regular season success that didn't really translate to the playoffs. Then, controversy struck. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Jokerit left the league before the playoffs due to pressure from investors and fans alike. This departure, and the need to sever all its financial ties with Russia, caused Jokerit to lay dormant in 2022-23. Last season saw a grand return for Jokerit orchestrated by a management group full of Finnish NHLers, but the team is still in the country's second-tier league. The Jokers finished third in the league with a 23-10-10-5 record before losing in the quarterfinal of the league's playoffs.
Now, a 40-year-old Filppula returns to Jokerit as a revenant looking to get his former club back to the top. If the Jokers win the Mestis and then beat the worst Liiga team in a qualification series, they can return to the top-tier Liiga that Filppula used to play in.
This comeback bid will be a difficult task, but talent like Filppula helps make this possible, even if age might limit his abilities. After his last NHL season with the Red Wings in 2020-21, he has played the past three seasons in Switzerland with Genève-Servette HC, scoring 131 points in 145 games. These totals rank third most in the league during that time span.
Filppula is a lock to play for Jokerit this season, but his future on the ice is uncertain after that. What is clear is that once his playing career is officially over, he doesn't plan to leave Jokerit behind. Ilta-Sanomat reported that he plans to join the ownership group as a co-owner.
As a player and soon co-owner, it's clear that Filppula wants to restore Jokerit to where it stood when he left. Before he finishes his hockey career, he wants to finish with care for where it all began.
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