Quote:
Originally Posted by HPLovecraft
He has shown just as much offensive skill with Calgary as a player like Matt Stajan has shown, yet receives half the time on the PP.
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It's a tough position to be in... Matt Stajan should have more icetime than Backlund, did he deserve it last season? No. But Stajan is def a better player than last year has shown, the guy had a crappy year. What do you do with a player like that? Keeping cutting his ice time? That is not how you should handle a vet who clearly had lost his confidence. You need to let him play his way out of it and it wasn't happening so Stajan was left on the 4th line for the better part of the last half of the season, and Backlund got more and more ice time.
I think next season you will see Backlund playing a better role, this was his first full season in the NHL and showed some great strides and he has to continue playing that way. I suspect this topic will die sometime next fall.