Of alumni-department note today:
- Former Red Wing Jakub Vrana has signed a pro try-out with the Washington Capitals, most likely saying, “No, thank you” to some lucrative offers from Czech Extraliga teams in the process;
- And, as the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood notes, Valtteri Filppula, who’s 40 years old, is going to join Jokerit HC of the Finnish Mestis. Ilta-Sanomat’s Sami Hofr and Marko Lempinen report that Filppula will officially be named to the team next Monday, and, as Eargood reports, Filppula’s going to try to bring Jokerit back up to the Finnish Liiga:
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.
Jokerit’s owned by people like Teemu Selanne and Jari Kurri, and Filppula, who’s coming off a Swiss league title with Geneve-Servette, brings them a huge cachet of star power as a member of the IIHF’s Triple Gold Club.
He’s going to play for Jokerit for at least a year before joining ownership, and the “long play” is for Jokerit to work its way up to promotion to the Liiga, which is going to take some significant work.
