Bruins forward David Backes, injured last Saturday when Yanni Gourde's skate blade cut his leg open, successfully talked his way into joining the Bruins on their upcoming four-game road trip (stops in St. Louis and his Minnesota hometown will do that).
And as a result, the 33-year-old has given us the gruesome details of the injury.
"I felt an impact with my leg and then I looked down and saw just skate blade there so when I touched it, anything I touched turned red right away," Backes recalled. "I said, 'Well, there's a lot of blood coming out of there, I better get my butt off the ice.' A little panic with how much blood was coming out, with what I was seeing and what I was touching. Probably doesn't help that I was at the end of a 30-40 second shift at the time.
"My heart rate was probably racing and pumping stuff through there pretty good."
The cut required 17 stitches, according to Backes, and has come with a timeline entirely centered around the healing process to prevent Backes from extending his own misery.
For Backes, who missed 17 games earlier this season due to diverticulitis and a procedure that saw doctors remove nearly a foot of Backes' colon, that's the only focus if he's going to be anything worthwhile to the Black and Gold in the postseason.
"Just for the wound to heal so we don't have an infection which persists and creates a bigger injury," Backes said of his recovery and expected return to the Bruins. "It's a little sore, feels like a Charlie horse, but whenever the docs say it's OK, as far as this being closed up enough, then it should be fine. I don't know if that's five days, seven days, 10 days, probably somewhere in that realm I'll be back functional again.
"In the scheme of things, I think timing-wise I'll be back in plenty of time for playoffs and get my stride again and we'll be hopefully a lot of healthy bodies back in a few games to tune up for that second season that we're really eyeing up."
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