He should be retained long-term at a manageable price going forward. He is the perfect C2/C3 for a contending team - someone who can contain the other team's scorers allowing the more offensively gifted players easier minutes, and is an elite penalty killer. Five or six years is what I would aim for.
I do acknowledge he has been injury prone, but when he first broke into the league he had poor conditioning where as he was named the "fittest Flame" in 2013-14 (Gio beat him this season) and has been committed since. Hopefully the worst is behind him.
In addition to Steinberg's article, Backlund also leads Flames forwards in scoring chance differential over the past three seasons at +6.0%, second only to Brodie at +6.2% when considering all players. Despite, like Pat mentioned, him playing significantly more difficult minutes than other forwards. From War-On-Ice
Unique Team Traits: Mikael Backlund, the Calgary Flames, and the secretly great penalty kill
Maybe Mikael Backlund’s not on your radar. Unless you’re a Flames fan, there’s not really a reason he should be. He was drafted in the first round, but not super high (24th). He can score, but his numbers last year weren’t jaw-dropping (18 goals, 39 total points). He’s 6’0”, 198 pounds. He’s 25. In a league of elite athletes, he might come off as somewhere around average.
Only, he’s not. He’s a sneaky smart defensive player with some pop to his stride who kills penalties with the best of them, making anything he brings to the other end that much more valuable. There’s a pinch of Frans Nielsen in his game.
Among regular penalty killers (forwards who logged at least 1:30 of short-handed TOI per game), Mikael Backlund was the eighth best shot suppressor in the NHL, ahead of names like Jordan Staal, David Backes and Sean Couturier. As you may be aware, suppressing shots is more or less the goal of the penalty killer. Of the names ahead of him on the list, only Ryan Kesler and Chris Higgins started more of their shifts in the D-zone.
Even amongst his own team he stood out. The Flames gave up a mere 35 shots per 60 minutes with Backlund on the ice, which is 15 better than Matt Stajan’s per-60 number, and no forward on the Flames sees more short-handed ice than Stajan.
To top it all off, Backlund drew short-handed penalties at the 5th best rate among regular penalty killers last season, behind only Jordan Staal, David Backes, T.J. Oshie and Brian Gionta.