David Backes Takes Shots At Bruce Cassidy.

"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."

"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," Backes acknowledged.

"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"

"So they didn't want me to go to Providence, I couldn't. well, I was no longer on the team, 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 recalled. "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, 'Ok 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. I was doing my best, and truthfully, I was at a Christian conference actually, because I was doing nothing."