I barely noticed him out there; except for another stone hands shot into the goalie's chest. Or was that last game? Whatever. Guy's a bust. Backes alone makes more than the six players on our bottom two lines... Think about that for a minute... Or, better yet, don't; there's no point.
So, when you start to look for reasons why your team can't advance, it's not that difficult to see that one, or two, or three bad high dollar signings, (like Beleskey and Backes) can make the difference between being a middle of the pack team and an elite one.
In a general sense.
But in this case (so far anyways) Backes contract hasn't hurt the Bruins.
The rest of his 2016 UFA class was a bust. I wouldn't of given his money to any of those other highly sought guys in 2016 (Ladd, Eriksson, Lucic, etc.)
The 2017 UFA class was also pretty darn underwhelming. Nothing much of interest there. I wouldn't of given the term/$$$ to Shattenkirk and Radulov that they got.
They struck out on Tavares, had nothing to do with money.
Kovalchuk went to the team that offered the most term.
They weren't getting Karlsson from Ottawa, being in the same division.
I'm not sure about anyone else, but I didn't see anything the other night out of Jeff Skinner that made me wish the Bruins had stepped up and acquired him this past summer. Certainly not enough to want to extend his contract.
Bruins have a fair amount of cap space now.
Could the Backes contract hurt next summer when needing to start re-signing the young players on the roster? Sure it could. And if they need to shed a good young player for peanuts because Backes is still on the books, then long-run it was probably a mistake.
But they Bruins have also made the playoffs both of Backes seasons in Boston, something they didn't do the two seasons before he got here. They have a very good chance of making it this year.
No Backes and maybe they don't see playoff action. And unused cap space doesn't help win hockey games.