FlamesNation player evaluation: Mikael Backlund

Okay, I know we haven’t done this before in this series, but… here are two more tables (with an additional column added on the end of both).

Backlund had a terrible start to the 2019–20 season, and he wasn’t necessarily alone in that regard. The Flames were doing alright in terms of generating opportunities early on in the season but they sat at a lamentable 13-12-4 record through Nov. 29, 2019, good for sixth in the Pacific Division and 20th in the league.

The Flames just weren’t scoring goals. Their 73 goals through the season’s first 29 games ranked dead-last in the Western Conference. Their minus-13 goal differential was second-worst. Matthew Tkachuk, Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, and Elias Lindholm were still scoring a little, but almost everyone below them was ice-cold — Backlund, especially.

Three goals and 10 points in 29 games aren’t good enough numbers for a second-line centre on a tanking team, let alone for the guy on a Flames team coming off a first-place finish in the West. Backlund’s two-way play was lacking, also; his 5v5 CF% of 51.88% ranked in the bottom-10 on the Flames, while his problematic expected goals against/60 figure of 2.73 ranked seventh-highest on the team.

What changed? Well, the coaching staff, for one. Geoff Ward stepped in to replace Bill Peters on November 27, two games before Backlund finally started scoring again. Around the same time, the Flames started winning a lot of games, including eight of nine between November 23 and December 12. Oh, and his individual shooting percentage nearly tripled, going from 5% leading up to November 29 to nearly 15% afterwards.

Backlund still had a fair bit going for him before he bumped the slump. His 60 shots in the first 29 games of the year ranked sixth on the Flames, behind only the usual suspects (Tkachuk, Gaudreau, Giordano, Monahan, and Lindholm). That works out to 2.07 shots/game, a figure which increased to 2.37 in the season’s final 41 contests.

Ultimately, Backlund had a funny year and it took a while for him to click. But… once he did, he was a rockstar, carrying a lot of the mail for the Flames down the stretch. Only Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk scored more points (37 each) than Backlund’s 35 in the final four months of the shortened year. His sparkling expected-goals for/60 figure of 2.66 tied with Gaudreau for fourth on the Flames, behind only Tkachuk, Andrew Mangiapane (Frolik’s “3M” replacement, who fit in like a glove), and Noah Hanifin.

Backlund’s CA/60 and xGA/60 figures weren’t exactly bad, but they weren’t phenomenal, either. That said, no Flames forward consistently draws harder match-ups than Backlund does. He showed well in the playoffs, contributing four goals and six points in a small 10-game sample during which he continued to post solid underlying numbers.

Backlund had a fine season in 2018–19. While many of his teammates soared to new offensive heights, Backlund continued chugging along as usual and posted a 21-goal, 47-point season, right in line with his career trajectory. With Backlund on the ice at 5v5 last year, the Flames scored 57 goals and allowed just 36, good for a startlingly good 61.29 GF% (sixth-best on the team). That figure dipped to 52.13% this year, still good for sixth on the Flames.

Last year, Backlund never had a stretch of play nearly as dominant as his 41-game bonanza in 2019–20. He scored 12 goals and 29 points in 47 games before the all-star break (0.62 P/GP) and added nine goals and 18 points in his final 30 games (0.60 P/GP). He was consistently solid.

Wouldn’t it be great if Backlund could score at his 0.85 P/GP pace from the end of 2019–20 for all of next year? Over an 82-game season, that’d be good for 70 points. Coupled with his ability to defend against other teams’ top lines, Backlund scoring 70 points might make him the Ryan O’Reilly the Flames have always wanted but never quite had!

…

Okay, back to reality. Backlund has a career shooting percentage of 9.2%, far below his later-season rate of 13.4%. It’s hard to see him ever scoring more than maybe 25-27 goals in an 82-game season, and that’s only if Matthew Tkachuk goes full playmaker mode and if Backlund stays at his current level of play. He’s scored 21 goals twice and 22 once.

But also, Backlund is 31 and next season almost certainly won’t be a full one. 70 points ain’t happening. But nobody has ever expected that level of production from Backlund and the Flames certainly aren’t paying him $5.3 million per year with that idea in mind. He’s a great two-way centre who the Flames cannot easily replace right now. As long as he continues scoring 20-ish goals and 40-ish points, the Flames’ coaching staff can rest easy knowing that they have a dependable guy available to them who can more than pull his weight at both ends of the ice.

Anything more than that is some sweet Swedish meatball gravy.

Mark Giordano | Sean Monahan | Sam Bennett | Johnny Gaudreau | Elias Lindholm | Dillon Dube | Milan Lucic | Rasmus Andersson | Andrew Mangiapane | Cam Talbot | David Rittich | Noah Hanifin | Matthew Tkachuk | Derek Ryan | Travis Hamonic | Tobias Rieder | TJ Brodie | Zac Rinaldo | Oliver Kylington | Mark Jankowski