The Flames do not have many expendable cheap young pieces on their team. Backlund is one of them and at this point is worth seeing what he can get.
The Flames have tons of cap space and are in such a position to win this trade. Backlund comes cheap, he comes with another year on his deal and will still be a RFA at the end of the contract. He also has proven to be a fairly solid defensive player and does have some offensive upside. A team trading for him might think he has potential to turn it around.
I have stated a couple times in this thread that the Flames need to use this trade chip and cap space as assets together in order to bring in a more expensive albeit better player. Chris Butler was a mediocre 24 year old 5/6 Dman for the Sabres, Paul Byron was a small AHL forward that showed he can score in that league. They turned those assets into a proven top 4 shutdown D, 1 year of a bad contract, and a 2nd round pick. Similar deals got the Canucks Erhoff and the Leafs Franson. The Flames need to use Backlund in a similar way to fleece a team looking for cap relief. There is no way they should lose this deal at least in the short term.
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