Quote:
Originally Posted by moon
How does it not help his argument?
Backlund is not a young player anymore so that BS excuse used in the past is out. The Flames are a bad team which means he has every opportunity to take a big role and get force fed top minutes and yet he still isn't good enough to do that even on this team with little to no competition.
And the word used to describe him was excellent. Excellent guys don't need other players to help them pad their stats. If he was excellent he would be able to create offense all on his own and certainly a hell of a lot more than a 35 point pace that he is currently on and would be a big career high for him.
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Excellent at what he does - which is playing a strong two way, third line centre role. Excellent may be a stretch. I would have used good at this point. However, trotting out point totals doesn't add to that discussion when that's not intended to be the full measure of his game by any means.
What is this about creating his own offense? There's very few players in the NHL who can create offense all on their own in today's game. Those are the elite level athletes like Ovechkin, Crosby, Kane, etc. I didn't see anyone putting Backlund in that category. That's not his role. Yet on this goal starved team, he is still tied for 2nd among forwards in points. The people that continue to blast Backlund are those that are expecting him to be some kind of elite number one centre. I think we can all agree that is not going to happen. He is developing very well into what he should be at this point - a good two way third line centre that can contribute on the scoreboard. He may be 24 but I would argue that he's transitioned into this type of role in the last couple of years so he's still getting used to it and developing quite well. I wouldn't trade that for Brookbank.