NHL Contracts: Each team’s worst deal

Boston Bruins: David Backes

Contract: Three years remaining, $6 million cap hit, $14 million total salary remaining, no-movement clause, no-trade clause (eight teams) starting in 2019-20, no-trade clause (15 teams) starting in 2020-21.

A lot of bad deals were signed on July 1, 2016. David Backes signed one of the worst. He got a five-year deal worth $30 million from the Boston Bruins despite being 32 years old. This made it a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad contract from the second it was signed.

Backes does many things well, but even in his prime, one thing he never had is speed.

To make matters worse, the Bruins like to play a fast game under head coach Bruce Cassidy. Backes does many things well, but even in his prime, one thing he never had is speed. To be fair, Claude Julien, who likes a heavy game, was the head coach when the Bruins signed Backes. That doesn’t make it defendable, however, because the NHL is shifting to a speed-based game.

Luckily, Riley Nash is the only guy Backes’ bad deal has directly cost the Bruins. However, he probably killed their chances of signing John Tavares, who would have made them immediate Stanley Cup contenders.

Honorable mention: David Krejci has a pretty awful deal as well. But at least he’s still a productive player. Krejci has significantly outproduced Backes and is still an average at worst skater. Jaroslav Halak got way too much term and money for someone who had as dreadful of a season as he did.