David Backes: The least publicized great player in the NHL?

When you ask a group average NHL fan about great players, you are likely to hear a few names multiple times. Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, The Sedin Twins, Shea Weber, Zdeno Chara, and Tim Thomas would probably come up right now (Well, Weber would for those fans who know Nashville has an NHL Hockey team, but I digress). However, there are many other players that are great, that any team would welcome to their roster with open arms, but are less publicized. Whether they are less publicized for playing in a smaller market (Rick Nash in Columbus, Eric Staal in Carolina), because his team has many players that are talented and they tend to blend together in people’s mind (Corey Perry/Ryan Getzlav/Bobby Ryan in Anaheim) , or any number of reasons, some players don’t seem to get the credit they should.

However, I think David Backes is the one that flies the furthest under the radar, especially after such a unique 2010-11.

In market of over-spending, Blues find value for cheap

Going into 2011, it was nearly unanimously agreed that this was going to be one of the weaker free agency pools in recent memory. Outside of Brad Richards, there wasn’t really a top level talent on the market and it led to him, as well as other players, going for above market rate. A talented, but very injury prone center Tim Connolly went at a price of 4.5 Mill, Buffalo paid their way straight to salary cap max by acquiring Ville Leino, Robin Regher, and Christian Ehrhoff, and Richards was signed to a mega contract with the New York Rangers directly after they bought Chris Drury out of a previous mega contract that they grew to regret. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Blues lacked ownership certainty, and were going to be limited to around the cap minimum.

And in spite of that, the Blues still managed to acquire players that filled their needs to a tee.