Detroit Red Wings: Steve Yzerman Welcomes Home Valtteri Filppula
By Tyler Kotila
The Detroit Red Wings have brought a former player back home to the place he started his career. General Manager Steve Yzerman has announced the Red Wings agreed to a contract with forward Valtteri Filppula.
It has been some time since Valtteri Filppula has suited up in a Detroit Red Wings uniform, being that he has been gone since the 2012-13 season. Since then, Filppula has bounced around between the Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers, and New York Islanders. Bringing home the Finnish forward is another move by Yzerman to bring in familiar faces at a reasonable price.
Filppula is a Red Wings forward for the next two years, worth $6 million with a $3 million cap hit. Truth be told, $3 million is not a bad price for the Red Wings to bring in someone who was once a good player for the Red Wings, as well as, a better version of Frans Nielsen. He’s no star, but that’s okay since he is merely adding some depth while the Red Wings finish off prospect development.
In seventy-two games for the Islanders last year, Filppula scored seventeen goals and had seventeen assists for thirty-one points on the 2018-19 campaign. Filppula has become a bit more defensive minded as age has come, but he can still produce points which will be great for the role the Red Wings envision him filling. Coach Jeff Blashill should employ Filppula as a center for a line that includes Andreas Athanasiou as a winger.
Filppula could allow Athanasiou to slot in as the winger on a lethal line if accompanied by someone like Filip Zadina or Taro Hirose. Overall, it’s an excellent all-around signing for the Red Wings to help continue the end of this rebuild. Filppula may be thirty-five, but two more seasons should not do much harm, all-in-all it is a good signing by Steve Yzerman and the Red Wings.
The kicker when it comes to the Filppula signing is that Yzerman HAS to allow the young talent to play, signing Filppula does not mean he can logjam the prospects and stunt development. Filppula is not around for the long haul, its two years, he’s filling a gap for the Red Wings, and that needs to be understood.
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The bottom line is, a good signing can become a lousy signing really fast if Filppula now prevents the prospect forwards from reaching the NHL level this year to get their shot to prove themselves at the NHL level.