USA's Backes says Team Canada fights weren't planned
Last Updated: Monday, January 18, 2010 | 4:47 PM ET
Joe O'Connor, National Post for CBC Sports
Chicago flyweight Jonathan Toews, right, vomited twice in the penalty box after dropping the gloves with rugged Blues forward David Backes. (Bill Boyce/Associated Press)David Backes, the hulking St. Louis Blues forward and member of the Olympic bound American team, claims he has no agenda.
He claims that Jonathan Toews, Corey Perry and Rick Nash all just happened to get in his way before the gloves came off and the punches flew. Backes swears that he is not trying to send a message, or systematically brawl his way through the Canadian Olympic roster before the Olympics actually begin.
He would never do that.
"No direct agenda there," Backes told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last week, the day after he fought Nash, the Columbus star and Canadian Olympian.
The skirmish with Nash came after Backes had already fought Anaheim's Perry and Chicago's Toews — also Canadians - and also Olympians. "They just tend to be the guys that are in my way and creating some havoc around."
Toews, a flyweight generally regarded as a pacifist, vomited twice in the penalty box after receiving a beat-down from Backes on Jan. 2.
Perry managed to keep his dinner where it belonged five nights later, as did Nash. Blues coach Davis Payne denied his player's pugilistic encounters were part of some grand pre-Olympic strategy, and instead painted the flare-ups as a by-product of his own plan to match Backes against the other teams' top lines.
"It's certainly a great statement by David that hey … if this is going to be the matchup, you're going to have to deal with all areas of the game," Payne told the Post-Dispatch. "The other teams are going to have to defend, they're going to have to go through big bodies, and if they don't like it, obviously David has made some great statements."
They are the type of statements that surely sound like the Star Spangled Banner to Brian Burke's ears. The general manager of the US team is a hockey architect who likes rosters loaded with talent — and "truculence" — scoring pop — and pugnacity. Old time hockey is the Burke Way. And it appears to be the Backes Way.
St. Louis is in Columbus Monday night. Round 2 with Nash awaits. Round 3 in Vancouver is just around the corner.
