TORONTO – Valtteri Filppula was close enough to becoming a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs before the NHL trade deadline that he received a phone call from Mike Babcock.
"We had a good conversation," Filppula said Thursday. "Obviously, I've known him for a while so it was nice to catch up."
Evidently, it wasn't good enough to change his mind about the possibility of coming to Toronto.
The 32-year-old Finn had a clause in his contract where he could name the 16 teams that the Tampa Bay Lightning could trade him to. The Leafs weren't on that list and Filppula wasn't comfortable adding them.
He and agent Markus Lehto had spent considerable time over the summer weighing the merits of each potential city.
"I had made a list earlier and just decided to stick with the list," said Filppula. "I think everything at the trade deadline comes at you really quick. When you do those things (in the summer) you have a little bit more time to think about things.
"So I just wanted to stick with that."
As a result, he ended up getting sent to the Philadelphia Flyers along with a fourth-round pick and a conditional seventh-rounder in exchange for Mark Streit. His fourth game in a Flyers sweater brought him to the Air Canada Centre to face Toronto on Thursday night.
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