Practice Day | Mikael Backlund – 23.10.25

Practice Day | Mikael Backlund – 23.10.25

Max, when you’re going through a stretch like this, just uh how important is it to kind of maintain the same energy, kind of maintain the same kind of level of eagerness each and every day you come to the rink? Yeah, I know that’s a huge key. Um, you know, it’s not going to help us coming in every day and feeling sorry for ourselves and being down and, you know, uh, bad energy cuz that spreads quickly in the room. We got to come today. It’s a privilege to play in NHL. We, you know, we got to come in every day, enjoy being a player, uh enjoy each other, um spread the good energy to each other, and you know, we will get out of this. It’s a tough stretch. Every team goes through it every year. It’s it’s really tough when it’s first thing you do in the season. Uh but when we get out of this, we’ll be even stronger. Um the group will be in, you know, we’re really close group, but it’ll be even tied to getting out of a stretch like this. What are you sensing from the group um in terms of coming to the rank every day? And I know you guys as leaders, you know, wear a lot of that, but just what are you sensing from? Yeah. No, guys, guys excited to be here. Um, we No one’s happy where we’re at. We don’t want to be in the position we are. No one’s accepting it, but like I said, it doesn’t help for um being negative and and um you know, bad teammates or anything like that. So, we got to stay positive and that’s every day we come in. We enjoy being with each other and um trying to find a way to win hockey games. Um that’s what it comes down to. And uh um staying positive is a huge key even when in tough times. Michael, where where was the breakdown on the overtime winner last night? Um yeah, I know. I mean, they entered the zone. Um me, Maddie made a switch and uh they made a nice play and we didn’t recover and um yeah, it’s on me to recover that back post and uh take away that play. Max, you’ve been around for a minute now. Do do you remember the team going through a stretch like this where goals were so hard to come by? Uh not on top of my head, but we definitely had these stretches before. Maybe the um I don’t know my longest losing streak before. Uh you may know, I don’t know. Nope. Uh I thought you guys would all know that. Um okay. Yeah. Uh but it’s never fun and um it’s uh we will get out of it. Uh we have a really really talented group. Uh when we play there the flames way the right way the way we know we can play. We we’re hard to play against. So we do create a lot of looks and it’s coming. Um you know there before that last road trip there was four whatever 40 50 minutes of each game where I thought we play really well. we played that way and then key moments in games we weren’t smart enough and that made made us lose games and um then we started that streak and then it’s been tough and uh had a tough road trip now we wanted wasn’t acceptable I think though at home here we’ve been playing better and um it’s going to come uh I believe in this group and um yeah no pain no gain is that what you say with all you’ve seen and in your experience what what gets a team out of the street like this is it one thing. Is it a an ugly goal? Is it a a gutsy win? Like what starts to turn something like this? Yeah. No, I think collectly we got a you know keep pushing each other and doing the little things right out there and yeah, for sure what you call a gritty goal or what? Uh an goal can help it. But also I feel like just that one player have that courage to make that one big play and then make a nice you know big score a big goal and to get the team going. I think that could be a big key too. And it doesn’t always have to be an ugly goal that turn things around. It can be an individual performance, someone just showing courage, uh doing the right things and ending up scoring a big goal. So, uh or big MPA, wherever it can be. Um so, um yeah.

“When we get out of this we’ll be even stronger”