Quote:
Originally Posted by Poe969
My issue with this is that his numbers are inflated because of one above average year. He was basically a 40ish point player who had one year over 50 points and it doesn't seem like he'll get that this year. His one good offensive year likely won't be repeated by him again. And as for him ranking #53, if you look at the past few years of Stanley Cup champs or even finalists, where would he rank? Teams that go deep or win the Cup typically have better centers on their second line. I don't want the Flames to be like the rest of the teams in the league, I want them to win and to do that they need better value and more points coming from players.
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I went back and manually tracked the stats for the 10 centers from each of the Stanley Cup semi finalists from the 2013-2014 season to the 2016-2017 season (Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Anaheim, Tampa Bay, St. Louis, San Jose, New York Rangers, Chicago, Montreal, Los Angeles), plus the Flames. In cases where a player was in the top 10 of multiple teams, I summed their results. If they were in the top 10 for one team but then traded to a team not in these group, or didn't rank in the top 10 in this group, I didn't chase down their totals outside of the initial scenario.
Among these 12 teams, I compiled basic scoring stats (GP, G, A, P, +-, P/GP) for 11 centres (as listed by NHL.com).
Backlund ranks as follows in each category:
GP: 12th
G: 18th
A: 20th
P: 21st
+-: 26th
P/GP: 34th
So if you're looking across 12 teams, a top 2 centre should be ranked 24th or higher in these categories. The totals are generally favorable to Backlund (at least partially due to playing on the same team over the entire term), and the P/GP rank him among third line centers.
Not sure if all of this means anything, but it seems to suggest that among teams reaching the Stanley Cup semifinals over the past 4 full seasons, Backlund is somewhere between a second line center and a third line center. Which seems about right? He might be a third line center on teams like Pittsburgh, LA, San Jose, or Tampa. But he could be a second line center on teams like Anaheim, Chicago, or Calgary.
The Flames lack of depth at center is precisely why I want him re-signed. But that's just one man's opinion.