Mikael Backlund

Last Season

Seventeen goals and 26 assists in all 82 games — 43 points, plus-seven 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. A hundred and eighty-six shots produced 17 goals from a median distance of 33 feet, with a third of his attempts coming from beyond forty. 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 fifteen years younger.

The Physical Game

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

The Intangibles

The plus-seven 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 46.5 per cent of the expected goals, 21st 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 one club. Four points in his last ten. This is what it looks like near the end and there is nothing sad about it.