Backlund becomes expendable the day one of Bennett or Monahan can start in the D zone against tough competition and still drive possession favourably. That could be as soon as a year or two, or it could be never. But until that point, he's an indispensable part of our team. Easily worth the ~5M/year extension he'll get next offseason. Plus we'll have 5M extra of Bouma/Stajan money and no one else major to extend so there's no way we lose him solely due to cap concerns.
Looking forward, the only slightly iffy window cap-wise is in 2 years with Tkachuk being the only expiring contract. But we've currently got $33M of cap-space that year, so it's not a problem right now - it's just a constraint that BT has to take into consideration over the next 2 offseasons.
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