Backes wants to play, hasn’t requested trade

WINNIPEG — Reading between the lines, it sure seems like David Backes won’t play for the Bruins organization again.

The question now becomes whether he plays anywhere at all this season.

Bruins general manager Don Sweeney said on Friday morning the Bruins winger hadn’t requested a trade, but he wants to play somewhere else if it can’t be in Boston. It seems unlikely Backes would suit up for the Bruins again after being waived and both sides mutually agreeing for him to sit out instead of reporting to Providence.

“That’s our decision,” said Sweeney. “David’s preference is obviously to be playing in the National Hockey League — he still believes he can play, he’s fit to play, but at this time we’re not going to have him play,” said Sweeney. “We’re going to see what options we may have between now and the deadline and certainly moving forward. For the time being he won’t be playing, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

Backes had just a goal and two assists in 16 games this season and lost a step from even a year ago when he posted seven goals and 13 assists in 70 games and was clearly going downhill then.

Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy has talked at length about internal competition and giving young players like Karson Kuhlman and Anton Blidh a shot, and that left no room to keep giving Backes chances.

What happens from here, though, is still a mystery, but it seems like they’ll at least try to move Backes.

“I’m going to explore everything that’s an option to us,” said Sweeney. “I don’t have a crystal ball as to what’s the best-case scenario that may present itself. We are in the situation here, we had roster decisions to make, and that’s really where this ultimate decision was made. He was healthy, able to play, and we had other players that the coaching staff, the organization, that we were going to put in situations to try, and that’s the decision we had to make.”

Miller a ways away

Kevan Miller suffered a setback in November after progressing to the point he was skating with the team, and while he’s on the ice once again, he still appears to be a ways away.

“Kevan’s got a long, slow progression in front of him and we’re going to be very cautious in how he goes about that,” said Sweeney on Friday.

“We’ve got a plan laid out. Those are week-to-week updates as opposed to dayto-day updates with Kevan Miller, so check back in a couple weeks to see where we are, and we’ll have another one. But again, he is back on the ice – probably will not be integrated back into practice for some time. We just need to give him the proper time to hopefully re-insert himself into practice, and then we’ll go from there. Connor (Clifton), I think, will be more on the shorter side of things.”

Rask is back

Tuukka Rask was back for his first game since Jan. 14 on Friday in Winnipeg.

The Bruins netminder was concussed in Columbus and missed the final three games before the All-Star break, but was taken off injured reserve in time to be scheduled to start the first of the back-to-back road games out of the break.