This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Mikael Backlund

Nine hundred and ninety games, seventeen career shorthanded goals, and the captaincy at thirty-five.

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 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	990	200	331	531	+62	455	35	17	35	2401	8.3	17:11

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

15 goals and 24 assists in all 82 games — 39 points at 19:14 a night, minus-4, with 2 power-play goals, 1 shorthanded goal and 2 game-winners on 209 shots at 7.18 per cent, and 24 penalty minutes. He was 35 and it was his first season as captain.

51.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,188 minutes, the 65th percentile. His ice went 50-47 against an expectation of 50.51-47.64 — very nearly exactly what the chances said, from the man taking the hardest assignment every night.

The Finesse Game

209 attempts at a median of 30 feet, with 33 per cent from inside 20 and 33 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 7.18 per cent. Two hundred goals in 990 games and a career 8.33 per cent; there has never been much of a finish.

24 assists and 331 for his career. He moves the puck early and simply and he is almost never the man who loses it, and the hockey sense is the best on the roster and has been for a decade.

He wins the draw that begins the shift.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 206. He forechecks honestly and finishes checks without punishing anybody, and he competes on the wall against men who are bigger and wins more of those than he should.

24 penalty minutes in 82 games and 455 in 990 for his career is a very low rate for a centre who takes the hardest defensive shifts, and it is because he is almost never out of position.

The Intangibles

Twenty-fourth overall in 2007, out of Vasteras, and 990 games and 531 points at 35, all of them here — the longest single-club career of anybody in this chapter.

Seventeen career shorthanded goals and a Selke finish behind him. He is the captain of a club that has just traded its goaltender, two of its top four defencemen and three top-nine forwards, and he is the only man left who was here when it was good.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,188 minutes

Expected goals: 51.5%; 65th pct
Shot attempts: 54%; 85th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 50 for, 47 against. Expected: 50.5 and 47.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

91st

Numbers

65th

The report ranks him 26 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1188 minutes at five-on-five

Blake Coleman81%
Andrew Mangiapanenow WSH48%
Jonathan Huberdeau26%

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, 2023-24

The club: CGY took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.5% — 1.6 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,188 minutes at five-on-five — 82nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Blake Coleman	52.2%	46.6%	42.9%
Andrew Mangiapane	52.8%	50.0%	53.4%
MacKenzie Weegar	52.4%	50.8%	49.2%

52.2% together, 46.6% for him apart and 42.9% for Coleman apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

295 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 33% from beyond forty.