St. Louis Blues’ David Backes Named NHL First Star of the Week
For the second week in a row, a St. Louis Blues player has won the NHL’s First Star of the Week Award, as center David Backes was named the recipient of the weekly award. The captain follows his linemate, forward T.J. Oshie, who was awarded with the honor last week.
Backes had an incredibly impressive week, notching five goals and three assists over three wins. Four of those goals came on January 6 against the Arizona Coyotes, which was the second four-goal performance of Backes’s career. It was particularly impressive that all four of Backes’s goals came consecutively in the Blues’ 6-0 victory.
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After a rough beginning to the season, Backes has come alive lately. He scored roughly a third of his goals during the past week, as he went into the week with nine goals but now has 14. Much of that has been thanks to the recent reassembly of a line with Backes, Oshie, and Alexander Steen, which had been the Blues’ top line in past years but had been broken up this season as the team sought to add a bit more of a “high-end skill” element to their game. However, since the Steen/Backes/Oshie line has been put back together, the team has been able to dominate in the offensive end by getting physical and making things rough defensively for their opponents.
The Blues are the first team to have the First Star of the Week in back-to-back weeks since the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin won the award for the weeks of both November 25 and December 2 in 2013. It’s already the fourth time this season that a Blues player has received the honor, as Vladimir Tarsasenko won it for the week of October 27, and Jori Lehtera won it for the week of November 16.