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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He has very low mileage for his age due to being a late bloomer and having multiple injuries earlier in his career. I don't think he has peaked yet, and I would much rather have him for 5.35M/yr until he's 35 than someone like Lucic at 6M/yr until he's 35. Yes, Toews is the better player, but he's earning nearly twice as much. And what team in the NHL wouldn't want Bergeron? This cap his is very comparable to other shut-down centres with similar ages and counting stats, see multiple previous posts. And Backlund does the heavy D-zone lifting more than any of them.
Yes, I was hoping for a lower cap hit and term, given Treliving's previous track record of re-signing players, but this contract is fair to both the team and the player.
Personally, I think Backlund may have been mentally weighed down a bit by the ongoing contract talks, and hopefully he can relax a bit now. His shooting percentage is much lower this year than the previous five seasons, and I think that has been more of a mental issue than a physical issue this year.