Bruce Cassidy and the Boston Bruins had a difficult decision to make, but at the end of the day, their jobs center around putting the best hockey team they can on the ice.
And that’s why the Black and Gold placed veteran forward David Backes on waivers Friday with the purpose of assigning him to Providence of the American Hockey League.
It’s hard to say what’s next for the seldom-used 35-year-old forward, but it doesn’t seem there’s any future for him left in Boston. Backes has appeared in just 16 games this season, and when he has been in the lineup, he’s averaging less than 9 minutes of ice time per game.
Backes’ concussion issues have been well-documented, most recently costing him 13 games this season. At a certain point, the risk of further injuring Backes became too much for the Bruins to ask him to play that certain way. Quite frankly, that — paired with an obvious drop-off in the veteran’s game — is why they no longer have a place for him on their NHL roster.
“We brought him in to give us some of that bite. … It was there for a while and then some concussions came into play,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy explained Friday.
“You always want to be careful (when) you’re pushing guys to play a certain way, but now you’ve got a guy who, who knows, might be one hit away from having some damage. You’ve gotta be very careful with that. I know it’s a business, but that is the human side of it.”
Essentially, it got a point where the Bruins didn’t want to ask Backes to continue to play the role of enforcer. As for the other roles he served, there are players on the Bruins’ roster now who can do those better.
“We just felt a guy like (Karson Kuhlman) or maybe (Anton Blidh) down the road has more pace to his game to add to, you know, to go that route with David,” Cassidy continued. “You’ve got (Chris) Wagner in the lineup who plays the banging role on the fourth line so (Backes) bumps into that. He bumped into (Brett) Ritchie moving to the third line. So there’s a little roster competition that we felt the other guys were a little ahead of them.”
