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Red Wings Hronek, Vrana Earn Bronze Medal With Czechia at Worlds

Former Red Wings player Valtteri Filppula joins Triple Gold Club as Finland wins world title

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Filip Hrone, Jakub Vrana, Detroit Red Wings
Red Wings teammates Jakub Vrana and Filip Hronek helped Czechia earn bronze at the world championship.

For the fourth successive IIHF World Championship tournament, Detroit Red Wings players are coming home with medals around their necks.

That’s the good news. Of course, the bad news is that if your team’s players are perenially winning medals at the world tourney, it more than likely means the club wasn’t playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

This year, it was Czechia, whose roster included Red Wings defenseman Filip Hronek and forward Jakub Vrana, rallying from a 3-1 first-period deficit to whip the USA 8-4 in Sunday’s bronze-medal game. Neither Hronek or Vrana figured in the scoring during the game.

Forward Riley Barber, who spent most of the 2021-22 season with the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins, was part of the vanquished USA roster. Barber led the Griffins with 28 goals in just 49 games this season. He also saw action in four games for the Red Wings.

Last year, then-Red Wings defenseman Troy Stecher helped Canada win the gold medal at the worlds. In 2019, former Detroit forward Anthony Mantha was part of Canada’s silver medal-winning squad. A year earlier, then-Red Wings forward Gustav Nyquist won a gold medal with Sweden.

The 2020 IIHF World Championship was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ex-Red Wings Forward Filppula Joins Triple Gold Club

After squandering a 3-1 lead, Finland ended up scoring in overtime to defeat Canada 4-3 in the gold-medal game. It was the third straight tournament seeing a Canada-Finland final.

Via the victory, Finland captain Valtteri Filppula is adding his name to a very exclusive list. He’s now part of the exclusive Triple Gold Club. This group of players have won the IIHF World Championship, Olympic Gold Medal and Stanley Cup during their playing careers.

Filppula, 38, captained Finland to the gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. He won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings in 2007-08. Fillpula played two stints in Detroit – from 2006-13 and 2019-21.

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He’s the 30th player to earn membership in this fraternity and the 10th who won the Stanley Cup while playing for the Red Wings. Igor Larionov, Slava Fetisov, Brendan Shanahan, Jiri Slegr, Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall, Nicklas Lidstrom, Mikael Samuelsson and Pavel Datsyuk are the others.

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