Quote:
Originally Posted by boogerz
Based on his play earlier in the year, it's not previous injuries catching up to him or age-related skill decline.
Backlund has been leading all Flames forwards in ice-time for almost the entirety of this season, which he's never done before. He's averaging 19:10 ATOI. This is on top of facing the toughest match-ups each night. The Flames are essentially asking him to be Anze Kopitar, even though Backlund has never been on the same tier of player as Kopitar.
That's a lot to ask of a guy that's turning 36 in a month. He's probably just very fatigued from over-use and probably won't have anything left in the tank for playoffs, even now that they've started to scale back his ice-time to ~16-17 mins/night.
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Also the Flames just did acquire another #2 center on Frost. Makes sense to transition Backlund into more of a pure shut down role and give Frost some of those offensive opportunities.
Edit: Looking into this a little more, and there are very few players older than 35 in the NHL. Only 25 skaters are 36 or older, and almost all fit into one of two categories:
1. Semi-retired players, who are frequent healthy scratches or have been demoted ot the AHL already: Ryan, Vlassic, Reeves, Jack Johnson, etc..
2. Players so talented that their talent outweighs their declining physical abilities: Ovechkin, Crosby, Giroux, Marchand, Burns, Kopitar, etc..
Some guys like Pacioretty, Jordan Staal, Nick Foligno, and Zuckarello are hanging on, as they are experienced excellent all around players. However, the list in that mold is pretty short, and the drop off is massive right at around Backlund's age.
