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After two straight collapses, the leadership of the Boston Bruins has come into question.
The Bruins wasted no time in addressing that via free agency on Friday, too, as general manager
Don Sweeney signed forward and former St. Louis Blues captain
David Backes to a five-year contract worth $30 million ($6 million average annual value). The 32-year-old Backes, who has primarily played center throughout his career (though he’s dabbled on the right wing in recent years), comes to Boston on the heels of a 21-goal, 45-point campaign for the Blues, and strong seven-goal, 14-point run in 20 postseason games as the leader of the Blues.
In total, the Minnesota-born Backes has tallied 206 goals and 460 points in 727 NHL games, and has been a 20-goal scorer in the last four full 82-game seasons (his career high came with 31 goals in 2008-09 and 2010-11). Beyond the point production, Backes is known as one of the league’s big hitters, and has finished atop the NHL’s hits leaders throughout his entire NHL career. And impressive given those traits, durability has been the name of his game, too, as the 6-foot-3 forward has missed just 13 games in total over the last six seasons (and he missed just three this past season).
But with Backes, it’s more than the numbers that popped out to Sweeney and Co., as the Bruins get a bonafide leader with this signing, as Backes has worn a letter on his sweater in seven of 10 total seasons in the NHL, including the ‘C’ as the St. Louis captain for the last five seasons.
With
Patrice Bergeron and
David Krejci locked up long-term down the middle, many expect that Backes could be a top-six option on the right wing for the Black and Gold, but Backes did note that most of his discussion with the Bruins focused on him being the club’s third-line center.
What that would mean for center
Ryan Spooner moving forward -- either a trade or a permanent shift to the wing -- remains to be seen at this very moment. But it’s obvious that the B’s need to bolster their right wing, and that’s something Backes could seemingly do in the now, especially with
Loui Eriksson’s departure from the organization on a six-year, $36 million deal with Vancouver. And it’s entirely likely that Backes, who has logged the 14th most minutes among NHL forwards over the last five seasons, will have to shift to the wing at some point in order to preserve some production in the later years of that contract when he enters his mid-30s.
The decision to go with Backes over Eriksson
does seem a little bizarre, at least at first glance.
When it came to the Eriksson discussions, you got the feeling that the Bruins had a hard year cap of four years. At 30, soon to be 31, the Bruins seemingly had legitimate concerns over Eriksson’s ability to remain a healthy, productive talent into his mid-to-late 30s. They
had the money to make a deal work, but it was the years that kept them back from going to the fifth or sixth year like the Canucks did at the start of free agency. So, the Bruins instead give that same money to Backes, who’s two full years older than Eriksson, for five years? Barring an early retirement from either one, Eriksson will be 36 years old when his contract runs out, while Backes will be 37. So in a way, they got older, and have gambled on a player whose style does not necessarily age as well as a player like Eriksson.
It’s a gamble that undoubtedly speaks to the theory that the Bruins really believed that they needed a new voice or presence to get in that locker room and challenge players to play up to their level.
Backes was not the only signing of the early afternoon for the Bruins, either, as the club brought
John-Michael Liles back into the equation on a one-year deal worth $2 million, and signed goaltender
Anton Khudobin to a two-year deal worth $2.4 million ($1.2 million cap hit).
The decision to bring Liles back into the mix sets Boston’s left side of their defensive group (though Liles did play on the right side at times this past season), and gives the B’s their Dennis Seidenberg replacement in terms of a veteran presence that Claude Julien can lean on in different situations.
The 30-year-old Khudobin split this past season between the Anaheim Ducks and San Diego Gulls of the American Hockey League, and won three of his nine NHL contests (.909 save percentage) compared to 19 of his 31 games in the AHL (.921 save percentage), but comes back to Boston looking to return to form as the solid backup that he was for the Bruins in 2013, with nine wins and a .920 in 14 games.
More importantly, Khudobin gives Julien a backup he’s familiar with and can trust when the Bruins need to find nights to let
Tuukka Rask rest, which has become an issue in recent years.
Most importantly, however, this likely helps the Bruins protect
Malcolm Subban, a player whose development has been stunted at times, from the impending Las Vegas expansion draft.
In related B’s news, the Bruins lost more than just Eriksson to the open market, as defenseman
Zach Trotman signed a one-year, $650,000 deal with the Los Angeles Kings, while forward
Lee Stempniak signed a two-year, $5 million deal in Carolina, and much maligned winger
Brett Connolly signed a one-year, $850,000 contract with the Washington Capitals.
If there’s still an area of need for the Bruins, though, and if Backes does indeed play center for the B’s, it’s the right wing, where the B’s have just
Jimmy Hayes and
David Pastrnak signed, or on the right side of their defense, where Adam McQuaid, Kevan Miller, and Colin Miller stand.
Ty Anderson has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, has been a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter since 2013, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • 
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