According to Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff, former Red Wings forward Valtteri Filppula earned a prestigious honor recently, adding to a career full of personal and team achievements and accolades:
Valtteri Filppula was part of the Detroit Red Wings team that won the Stanley Cup in 2007-08. That’s the franchise’s most recent Cup victory.
He’s a member of hockey’s elite Triple Gold Club. Those are players who’ve won the Stanley Cup, the IIHF World Championship, and an Olympic Gold Medal.
Now, Filppula is also a Hall of Famer. On Saturday, Finland’s Ice Hockey Museum announced six new inductees to the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame. Filppula was among that group.
Along with his Stanley Cup win with the Red Wings, Filppula helped Finland win the gold medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the IIHF World Championships on home ice the same year. Filppula was the captain of both of those championship Finnish sides.
In 2024, he added another layer to his unique hockey success story. Filppula led Swiss club Servette Geneva to the European Champions League title. He’s one of 10 Red Wings Stanley Cup-winning players in the Triple Gold Club, along with Slava Fetisov, Igor Larionov, Brendan Shanahan, Nicklas Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Mikael Samuelsson, Niklas Kronwall, Pavel Datsyuk and Jiri Slegr.
However, Filppula is the only member of that group to also win the European Champions League. In fact, he’s the only player in hockey history to own all four titles.
Continued; Filppula won’t join the Hockey Hall of Fame, but that’s still an incredibly impressive resume.
