Mikael Backlund

1,148 games, and still first over the boards against the other team's best.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2008-09	CGY	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0.0	10:44
2009-10	CGY	23	1	9	10	+5	6	0	0	0	47	2.1	12:36
2010-11	CGY	73	10	15	25	+4	18	2	0	1	144	6.9	12:05
2011-12	CGY	41	4	7	11	-13	16	2	0	2	85	4.7	15:23
2012-13	CGY	32	8	8	16	-6	29	2	0	1	88	9.1	15:07
2013-14	CGY	76	18	21	39	+4	32	5	4	3	178	10.1	18:32
2014-15	CGY	52	10	17	27	+4	14	0	2	2	103	9.7	17:45
2015-16	CGY	82	21	26	47	+10	28	3	3	4	155	13.6	16:26
2016-17	CGY	81	22	31	53	+9	36	7	0	7	197	11.2	17:36
2017-18	CGY	82	14	31	45	-21	78	3	1	2	214	6.5	19:01
2018-19	CGY	77	21	26	47	+34	52	1	1	4	205	10.2	17:54
2019-20	CGY	70	16	29	45	+3	26	3	3	3	157	10.2	17:57
2020-21	CGY	54	9	23	32	-7	30	0	1	1	144	6.3	17:36
2021-22	CGY	82	12	27	39	+16	30	0	0	1	214	5.6	17:07
2022-23	CGY	82	19	37	56	+24	36	5	1	2	260	7.3	18:10
2023-24	CGY	82	15	24	39	-4	24	2	1	2	209	7.2	19:14
2024-25	CGY	76	15	17	32	+4	32	1	1	3	175	8.6	18:44
2025-26	CGY	82	17	26	43	+7	16	1	1	3	186	9.1	17:57
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	1148	232	374	606	+73	503	37	19	41	2762	8.4	17:21

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

17 goals and 26 assists in all 82 games — 43 points, plus-7 on a club that was minus-43, at 17:57 a night. His eighteenth NHL season and his 1,148th game.

The Finesse Game

Never the point and enough to matter. 186 shots produced 17 goals from a median distance of 33 feet, with a third of his attempts coming from beyond 40. He is shooting from the outside because he spends his shifts in his own end by design.

The faceoffs and the reads are what he sells. He is where the puck is going to be, which at 37 is the only way to keep up with men 15 years younger.

The Physical Game

6 foot even, 206, and he competes on every wall without ever taking a penalty — 16 minutes in 82 games of the hardest defensive assignment on the roster. That is a remarkable number.

The Intangibles

The plus-7 on a team that was outscored by 43 is the most impressive line in the Calgary section, and it was earned in the toughest minutes available.

His on-ice rate reads 47.3 per cent of the expected goals, 32nd percentile, which is what happens when a coach sends the same man out against every top line for a whole season on a bad team. The shot attempts at 49.7 per cent — 54th percentile, comfortably the best forward mark here — are the fairer measure of him.

He is 37, in his eighteenth season, in the last stretch of a career spent almost entirely doing the unglamorous half of the job for 1 club. 4 points in his last 10. This is what it looks like near the end and there is nothing sad about it.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
34.3% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
32% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,143 minutes

Expected goals: 47.3%; 32nd pct
Shot attempts: 50.2%; 60th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 40 for, 40 against. Expected: 41.7 and 46.4.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

61st

Numbers

32nd

The report ranks him 29 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2025-26 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 45th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.85 a game
Distance: 2.90 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.5 mph; 94th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 19 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1143 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2025-26

The club: CGY took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.3% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,143 minutes at five-on-five — 77th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Blake Coleman	50.6%	40.9%	55.4%
Kevin Bahl	44.7%	49.4%	44.3%
Matt Coronato	44.1%	49.3%	46.5%

50.6% together, 40.9% for him apart and 55.4% for Coleman apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Coleman and did not follow him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

251 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 34% from beyond forty.