Valtteri Filppula debuted in the NHL with the Detroit Red Wings in 2005, with a team that was going to imbue him with a respect for playing sound two-way hockey, no matter his instincts or inclinations.
With Mike Babcock as the Red Wings' head coach, with Nicklas Lindstrom and Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg as the locker room's leaders, Filppula learned early on that, regardless of his natural skills, he couldn't get away with shirking his responsibility to block shots and back-check. Maneuvering around a defenseman, making him look stationary and silly and creating a scoring chance, was great.