David Backes has a lot to say about his time with the Bruins and very little of it is good

David Backes' tenure with the Boston Bruins started out ok, but quickly went downhill as the seasons went by. Now retired, Backes recently appeared on the Cam and Strick podcast to talk about his career and his time in St. Louis and Boston. He mentioned that he and Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy disagreed on his style of play.

"We had different views of how hockey should be played," Backes said. "He was a smaller, puck-moving defenseman, and I tried to eat smaller, puck-moving defensemen. I was more of the mentality of Blues hockey or traditional Bruins hockey of like 'Let's get it in and not let them get it out until they're fishing out of the back of their net' and 'Let's go low to high, pound it to the net, I'll see ya there and I'll jam it home' and he wanted to control through the neutral zone and carry it over the blue line and look for the play and it was just. I think we could've communicated more of what he was looking for because I tried to adapt."

Backes said looking back, perhaps he shouldn't have bothered to try and change his playing style.

"I tried to lose weight to try to keep up more with the play and in hindsight, I should've just said 'Hey, I am who I am and you're not gonna make. I'm more of a hammer than. or a power drill and I am who I am and I'm going to try to be the best version of myself and hopefully, you can use me mucking in the corners and getting to the front of the net," said Backes.

"You look at my type of player that's been through there and it's like 'nope not happy; not happy' and rightfully so because it's been a good team but we never saw eye to eye. Even if I'm one-on-one, it's likely going behind to the defenseman and I'm daring him to go back for the puck because I'm going to hopefully destroy him and then I'll get the puck that way and then try a one-on-one move and it's not going to work because he's gonna take it from me and send it back up the ice. So not happy with the way I was doing things and ice time dwindle, dwindle, dwindle, and now, you're excess, spare parts rather than integral to your team," Backes continued.

Backes said the Bruins' core of Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara and Brad Marchand were sympathetic to his position, but never really went to bat for him with Cassidy.

"They did express that to me but I think there's also a stance of like, is there a place to go into the coach's office and be like 'What's going on'?" Backes said. "I mean part of what it evolved to is now I'm on the bench for 50 minutes a game and I'm still going to be on there and try to pep everyone up and rah-rah and keep everyone on there and keep guys going. So that's what I turned into more later in my career but it felt like be effective doing that as well."

Backes said being a healthy scratch for game 7 of the Stanley Cup final against his former team the St. Louis Blues was a big blow, but the trade to the Anaheim Ducks stung even more. More specifically, the weeks leading up to the trade.

"So, finally, I think they made the organizational decision where it was like 'You're no longer going to be part of this group' and so they called me in and said 'We're gonna put you on waivers, and what are your plans?' and I was like 'What do you mean what are my plans? I don't really want to play in the minors. I don't want to go to Providence' and it's like 'OK, that's good because we don't want you to go there either and we're gonna look for a trade for you and if we don't find anything, we'll probably buy you out this summer' and not exactly what I wanted to hear but I thought my career wasn't really over but who knows, you still got a trade deadline coming up."

"...so it was like after a week or two, I'm thinking 'If someone picks me up and I'm just sitting at home, I'm gonna be a bag of turds when the new team gets me'," Backes explained. "And I wanna be a good player to prolong my career' so I was like 'let me come to the rink when the guys aren't there, workout and at least stay in decent shape and I'll be a better asset for you if somebody wants me to trade for, and they said no. So I said 'OK, let me go to Providence then and let me just workout. Again, if someone trades for me, I'm serviceable' and they came back 'No we don't want you to do that and we also don't think you should workout or skate on your own because we don't want you hurt if we're gonna buy you out'."

"So I had six weeks of not being able to workout or skate and then you don't know, ''k what happens if I do it on my own and I get hurt somehow, skating on my own, are they gonna pay me? Then you might have breached your contract because you got hurt somewhere outside of the team activities so. I was like lifting in my basement with like jugs of kitty litter because I didn't have workout facilities at home."

Backes retired from the NHL back in September after signing a one-day contract with the St. Louis Blues.

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