Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad Marsh
I'm a little surprised at how many people absolutely love this deal.
He's 53rd among centres in scoring this season. That's not likely to improve as he continues to age, and I suspect he has already hit his high water mark for points in the NHL. He will be on the wrong side of 30 for most of this contract. He's hit 50+ points once, and 40+ points only twice in his career. He is our second line centre this year, but only has 10 goals..........for a team that struggles to score, I'm not sure how well this is going to work out. His production is closer to that of a top-end third line centre, which he would be on a deeper team, but $5.35M/yr is too much for a third line guy.
I know scoring isn't everything, but you need it in that second line centre slot, and Flames could really benefit from additional top 9 scoring. The offensive production from Backlund will almost certainly decrease year over year on this contract. Not ideal.
The comparisons to Bergeron or Toews are laughable.
Sorry guys, I really like Backlund and really appreciate how much he loves being a Flame, but this term is too long and the $$ is too high for guy very unlikely to hit 50 points again in his career. We are upset with how much Brower makes on the third line. This contract could be worse than that for its last three years.
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Yikes. Backlund's shooting percentage is the lowest it's been in 7 years, his oiSH% is the lowest it's been in 7 years, and his PDO is the lowest it's been in 7 years.
Despite having an incredibly unlucky season, he still ranks 56th among NHL centres in production and is still on pace for 48 points and yet you think he won't reach 50 points again? Yikes. Last season, he ranked 35th among centres in points and considering advanced stats tend to normalize after an unlucky season 99% of the time, the chances are Backlund will be back to producing the way he was last season either nearing the end of this season or next season.
However, Backlund's offense isn't why he's so important to us. Yes, it's great he produces very good offensive numbers, but his defense is as good as any player's in the NHL. He gets buried defensively facing opposing teams' top lines every night and absolutely dominates them night in and night out despite getting buried in defensive zone starts. He's among the elite of the elite defensively.
His contract extension is an absolute steal and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't done their homework