Now a 34-year-old veteran, David Backes is doing everything he can to keep up in today’s NHL, even if the bread and butter of his game is shaping up to be a relic of the past.
No, Backes didn’t break into the league without a bucket on his head or anything like that, but the 6-foot-3 center’s propensity to throw his weight around — both to set the tone out on the ice and retaliate for past transgressions — is becoming much more of an exception that the norm in pro hockey.
The NHL Department of Player Safety has already had to issue a number of rulings to curtail questionable hits this year — with Panthers defenseman Michael Matheson handed a two-game suspension for dropping Vancouver rookie Elias Pettersson on Saturday.
The sequence, in which Matheson slammed Pettersson into the ice, landed the Canucks forward — and Calder favorite — into the concussion protocol, with the Swedish skater unlikely to play in Saturday’s matchup against the Black and Gold.
The decision to suspend Matheson has caused some division in the NHL landscape, with some praising the league’s stance of holding players accountable in order to prevent serious injury — especially when concussions are involved.
But others criticized the suspension, given the fact that Matheson was not penalized on the play — with some arguing that the hit itself was clean and that Matheson was being penalized for, well, simply being too strong.
For Backes, who has dished out 2,418 hits in his 13 years in his NHL career, finding that happy medium between keeping players safe and keeping that physical edge is something that the league is still in search of.
“Do you want guys getting head injuries? I don’t think so. But is there a physical portion to our game that needs to remain in order to keep it ice hockey? I think there is,” Backes said at Warrior Ice Arena ahead of Boston’s road trip out west. “Is there a certain pullback in physicality that maybe needs to happen to protect guys’ futures and longevity and mental state going forward? I think that’s kind of what the Department of Player Safety is leaning towards — that if it’s a questionable sort of contact and there’s a concussion on the play, you’re likely getting called and having a hearing.
Backes added: “There’s a little self-reflection I think that needs to happen, a little respect throughout the league, but there’s a certain physicality. I think it’s a trend that needs to be maybe more spoken and talked about, because five years ago, plays like that - he was getting rewarded for it. He was a rough-and-tumble D that you don’t want to play against, because he’d not only pin you, but get you parallel to the ice and get you the ground hard and you go whimpering back to the ice and maybe not go in his corner next shift. Now, the guy is suspended for two games.”
For Backes, who himself suffered a scary high hit from Oilers defenseman
Matt Benning
Thursday night that knocked him out of a game for most of the first period, the conversation needs to be had between the league and the players to encourage and teach the art of delivering clean, heavy checks — while also rooting out the culprits that are dishing out the dangerous hits.
“That sort of shift is happening … which I think it is, talking about it more, having that open discussion between the league and the players of just like, ‘Ok, we’re going to be physical. If you have a chance to hit a guy hard, hit him hard,’” Backes said. “‘But if you have a chance to hit him hard and clean and through the chest and blow him up? Great.’
“That should be applauded. It’s through the face, through the chin, through the unnecessary means — I don’t think guys have much appetite for sustaining excess concussions just for intimidation aspects anymore. I think that part of the game, sadly, a little bit for me, is slowly fading away or is gone and now they’re trying to phase it out altogether.”
Even as the league has gone away from enforcers and encouraging bone-crushing hits, Backes believes intimidation is a key facet of ice hockey — often serving as a deterrent from more controversial actions that a player could take to settle old scores.
“I think there certainly used to be a little bit more fear in guys that there’s repercussions or that big hit is coming back,” Backes said. “Well, if there’s hesitation, is a big hit not coming back and now there’s a little more leeway on the other side?
"Maybe sometimes you’ve got to pay a little bit to get that respect, I don’t know, but I think you're seeing a little bit more of ‘Ok, I can’t hit you necessarily, so now maybe I just drop my gloves and chase you down and whether you’re willing or not, get a few in on you and it’s seen as more of an admirable play that retribution with a full contact body check. I don’t know if that’s desirable either.”
Will a time come in which questionable hits are fully curtailed from the game of hockey? Given the fast-paced, split-second nature of the sport, not likely.
If that day ever comes, it doesn’t seem to be in the near future, with the onus on both Department of Player Safety and the on-ice officials to find that tricky equilibrium between physical — but clean — hockey.
“I suspect that they’ll look at it,”
Bruce Cassidy
said of Benning’s hit on Backes Thursday night. “I don’t know what the penalty — or there was no penalty, sorry. To me, that tends to be automatic in today’s game, almost, even if it’s not to the head, it just seems like those are getting called. Simply to eliminate them.”
