Getting Backes on the ice

Forward may play tomorrow

David Backes took a regular shift on the Bruins’ third line in practice yesterday, looks and sounds healthy and said he’s “ready to play ice hockey, in a game.” But Backes, speaking publicly for the first time since being knocked out of the lineup, still is not thrilled with the hit that made him unhealthy for two weeks, one that went unpunished both on the ice and by the league office. In an Oct. 18 game in Edmonton, the Oilers’ Matt Benning delivered a high hit to an off-balance Backes that dazed the Bruins forward. He went to the dressing room but returned to the game to play sparingly. Two nights later in Vancouver, Backes took the morning skate but did not feel well enough to play. Though he’s expected to return to the lineup tomorrow night in, Backes has missed five straight games. He believes his latest concussion didn’t have to happen. “I see (Benning) coming out of the corner of my eye and I’m bracing for a hit and it’s one of those ones where I feel that he’s got every opportunity to hit me through the body, maybe separate me from the puck. But then the majority, if not all of the contact is right to my face, jaw, chin,” Backes said yesterday. “To me, that was the kind of the hit they’re trying to get out of the game, when you have every opportunity to go through a guy’s body. But it put me out for two weeks. “Now we’re back hopefully playing again. I’ve had other people say, ‘Next guy that hits you anywhere up high, take a five-game suspension on him.’ I don’t know if that’s the way to go about it either but there’s a time when if you’re not being protected elsewhere, you’ve got to take it into your own hands potentially. I don’t know. We’ll see how it all happens.” You can understand Backes’ questioning of the NHL’s justice system these days, as well as his sensitivity to high hits. As a firsttime offender himself last year, he was tagged with a three-game suspension on a high hit to Detroit’s Frans Nielsen while Ottawa’s Mark Borowiecki, who had been suspended in the past, only got a one-game seat for his elbow to Urho Vaakanainen’s head that still has the Bruins’ rookie on the shelf with a concussion (Vaakanainen hasn’t skated since the hit). The light sentence freed the Senators defenseman to deliver another head shot to Cody Eakin that earned him a three-game suspension. And Backes had suffered concussions as a member of the St. Louis Blues before he got to Boston, where he now has incurred three more. “You start piling them, it’s not fun no matter when or if you have concussion, but you start adding them up and try to work through it,” Backes said. “If you’re multiplying them on top of each other, it starts to get dangerous. Yeah, I think there’s a sensitivity level throughout the league, throughout the educated world where you don’t want to get hit in the head unnecessarily. Is it part of our game? It certainly is part of our game. You’re going to have contact to the head. But unnecessary contact to the head when there’s an opportunity to go through a guy’s body and have the same effect, game-wise, I think that’s what’s paramount to how the game’s trying to be changed. “In the three concussions since I’ve been here there’s been no suspensions on them and I think all three of them have been on the line if not over the line. And there have been no secondary looks at them.” At 34, Backes has not reached a point where he’s had a enough of this dangerous game. But he hasn’t exactly shrugged off the concussions, either. “I’ve done some research and I don’t know if there’s a direct link at 14 (concussions) or seven or two is when all of a sudden you’re degenerating and you’re getting your tau proteins in your head to develop CTE. I think there’s not enough evidence yet,” Backes said. “That being said, getting to that magic number is certainly something that I’d like toavoid.” As for what may lay immediately ahead of him from a hockey standpoint, he skated on a line as the right wing with center Joakim Nordstrom with Anders Bjork and Ryan Donato alternating at left wing. After practice Donato was sent to Providence to get more playing time. “It’s going to be a cool look if that’s what (coach Bruce Cassidy) decides,” Backes said. “With (Nordstrom’s) wheels and ability, I think having a winger where he can put some pucks in my corner and I can go dig it out for him, or he can win a race to a puck and I can know that he’s down low and I can be the third forward if I can get back to the defensive zone first. Him being a lefty and me being a righty, we can split the faceoffs. We do have similar mindsets in how the game needs to be played. With some brief time together in the preseason, I really liked the way we worked together.”