The Calgary Flames are many things this year, and one of the most notable is that they are polarising. The fan base is decidedly divided on whether it’s time to rebuild and not just retool. The on-ice product is inconsistent and has led to Calgary being a basement team. They’ve climbed up to 30th in the NHL with their latest win over the Buffalo Sabres, but they are still very much at the bottom looking up.

This is not an easy season for anyone involved with the Flames, but one player who has been a surprising bright spot is none other than Mikael Backlund, the team’s captain and longest-tenured player.

Backlund’s putting up solid numbers

As a 36-year-old, Backlund has settled into his usual role. He’s a two-way centre who takes young players under his wing and makes them better. In almost every case, anyone who plays with Backlund puts up excellent numbers on the ice. It doesn’t always show up on the score sheet, but the two-way play is definitely seen with defensive impact.

Dom Luszczyszyn of TheAthletic shared his NHL Awards rankings, and Backlund made an appearance. The criteria for defensive rating are quoted as follows:

Forwards who play over 16 minutes per game, receive 15 percent of their team’s short-handed minutes and face top-line forward competition, ranked by their Defensive Rating.

Backlund finds himself fourth in this regard with a +2.5 rating. Despite there being a sizeable gap between him and Nick Suzuki’s leading +3.2, I still think it’s a wide-open race with Aleksander Barkov—last season’s Selke winner—being out with injury. This year’s crop of Selke favourites all play different styles of two-way play, and the biggest difference-maker for Backlund has to be the quality of competition that he faces.

Backlund faces the league’s top players

A simple graphic by Micah Blake McCurdy illustrates this point. The graphic below from HockeyViz.com provides a visual relative comparison of teammate and competition quality for any player—in this case, Backlund—with any other player in the NHL.

The most important part of the visual is the top right. On average, Backlund will face the top players on any other team, and this leads to the top three bars exceeding the red line for league average. In exchange, Backlund sees himself lining up against bottom-six players much less frequently, given how none of the bars ranked 7–12 surpass the league average.

Backlund is putting up solid defensive results despite not playing with Calgary’s best players at all. In comparison to the three players ahead of him in Dom’s defensive ratings, Backlund simply has it the hardest: He’s facing the hardest competition, and he’s doing it playing mostly with Blake Coleman and Sam Honzek/Connor Zary. This is not a slight against these players; they are just not the same calibre of linemates that other current Selke leaders get the opportunity to play with.

Flames captains defying Father Time

If Backlund wins the Selke, he’d be the second consecutive Flames captain over 35 years old to take home individual hardware after Mark Giordano won the Norris in 2019 as a 35-year-old. And even if Backlund doesn’t, his outputs speak for themselves, and he’s deserving of continued recognition for his two-way excellence.

Prime Mikael Backlund playing elite two-way hockey is already impressive enough. 36-year-old Mikael Backlund still getting the job done is arguably even more impressive.

A Selke-worthy season in a strange year

There is no telling where the Flames will end up this season. They are in a very deep hole if they are going to make a legitimate attempt at the playoffs, yet postseason hockey still feels within reach. You can bet most players in Calgary’s locker room feel the same way.

One of the biggest reasons this is actually true is due to Backlund’s elite ability to shut down other teams’ elite offensive players.

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