He’d just roughed up Alex Ovechkin and had previously made a sound defensive play on Vladimir Tarasenko.
But with his Swedish team clinging to a 2-1 lead over Russia in the dying seconds of their World Cup opener Sunday, Mikael Backlund would get his biggest assignment yet: a defensive zone faceoff against Pavel Datsyuk.
Quite an outing for the 27-year-old Flames centre ... until a clean loss to Datsyuk found the puck in the net seconds later for the apparent game-tying goal with nine ticks left on the clock.
However, sticking to the script of a dream-like debut on the biggest stage of his hockey career, the Ovechkin goal was waved off for being gloved in, giving Backlund and his Swedes their first win over Russia in a decade.