Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Trading Backlund for a RW puts us right back to having the worst collection of Cs in the division.
Backlund is a great player and if we trade him, it will almost certainly be for pieces that are less valuable
It absolutely boggles my mind how fans want to trade players the moment they become good. Backlund is a key piece and, with the style he plays, he should continue to be a key piece for at least 3 or 4 years.
The whole point of acquiring good players is to build a team. We have a team for the next 3 to 5 years (at least). Let's try to win with it,instead of trading it for more future parts.
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Nobody has said that he MUST be traded. My issue is that you cannot commit long terms to players like Backlund who is peaked or close to peaking. The guy will be 29 years old next year and it's safe to say last season or this season will likely be his career seasons and he's going to start slowly tapering down into his 30's. Flames will basically be overpaying him into his 30's and I simply don't see a guy that's going to be a 40-50 point player in a few years. I look at what the Penguins did with Jordan Staal who is a similar player to Backlund. They cut bait rather than overpay him for a long term and it was clearly the right move. His current deal with the Hurricanes is horrible and the Flames would be staring at the same mistake.
I realize that fans get attached to players but you simply cannot keep everyone in a salary capped league and some times the least popular decisions with fans are the best decisions. I would rather keep Hamonic and/or Brodie than attach my wagon to Backlund long term. I have no idea what term or money the Backlund camp is looking but if I'm the GM I would be offering him $4 million per season over 5 years if he wants the term because I know he's not going to be better than a $4 million player over the next five seasons. Even at that I'm not very comfortable handing him a contract that takes him to 34 years old.
I think they get a deal done but if the asking price is around $5 million per season for a long term I would trade him as he's not worth that money advanced stats and all.