By ANDREW ALLSMAN
ALHAMBRA, IL-- What makes David Backes worthy of the captaincy?
Its hard to picture where the Blues would've been last year without the 6 ft, 216 pound Forward, who had 31 goals and 31 assists, and a +31 rating in what would seem like a breakout season for Backes. Backes also had 31 goals in the 2008-09 season when the Blues made it to the playoffs.
You may be saying: "you cant pick a captain off stats alone." and i would have to agree but it does go a long way when it comes down to the final decision.
Also sometimes overlooked is the fact that Backes played in all 82 games in both the 08-09 season and the 10-11 season which is a very important stat because it shows that you come to play every night.
Do I consider Backes the front runner? Yes, and apparently so do most fans.
A recent poll on STL Today showed Backes getting 76% of the votes (based out of 1725 votes).
The Blues are still unaware who, or if there will even be a captain.
"We're discussing that now," Armstrong said. "We want to get the input of some of the other people in our organization - the coaches, some people in our management staff - and we'll have that decision by the first day of training camp ... whether we go with a group of players that will make up a leadership group or we name a captain."
The Blues claim that they have not decided "solidified" what decision they are going to make, but according to Jeremy Rutherford the Blues held a coaches meeting to make sure that everyone was on the same page at the different organization levels. In Rutherford's opinion this meeting would not come before something as important as the captaincy is decided.
"We're further ahead that we were at the end of the season, but we're not at the point where we've solidified what we want to do, and that's something that we'll spend the next three weeks discussing."
Interesting decisions going into training camp
- Battle for forward positions
- Bishop or Elliot?
- Defensive pairings
- Captaincy (obviously)
- Line combinations (probably have a good idea)
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