He hasn't lived up to the hype but that's because the hype was that he'd be Iginlas dynamic Swedish centre and the saviour of the franchise along with Sven. He is good at what he does in my opinion. His game has improved a lot in the past few seasons. He is a great 3rd line centre on a good team (which we are not right now
).
Also he's earning 3.7 million. I have no problem with Backlund right now, as long as he continues improving, slowly but surely. I don't think the problem is number 11. I think we just lack depth scoring over all and our roster is paying a lot of money to defencemen and wingers who aren't producing or we don't/won't need. We lack an NHL starter and we have a lot of young players learning the game.
Almost none of that is Mikaels fault. He is the least of my worries and I'm sure Brad isn't up there thinking about Backlund. Let's talk about Hudler