Marvel Week: A retrospective of Captain America or; David Backes hates Canada

It’s Marvel Week here at SB Nation (no, I don’t know why they didn’t do Star Wars week either), and I will just come out and say it: I am not a Marvel person. I don’t really love any of the characters save for Spider-Man and Iron Man (tone is everything and the comics and movies for these two are awesome, especially the masterpiece that is Marvel’s Spider-Man on the PS4). I’m a DC gal myself, which is its own can of worms that I don’t want to get into because I still want a decent Superman move with Henry Cavill and I know that I’ll never get it.

Anyway, I’ve tossed most of the Marvel stuff over to our resident film critic Dan Buffa, because he has actually watched all of the movies and I’m pretty scattershot with them. I do have one decent Marvel bit of content up my sleeve, and that is David Backes.

Between the 2010 Olympics and that heartbreaking gold medal loss and the 2014 Olympics and that half-assed fourth place finish, nice guy and animal lover David Backes absolutely lost it on Canadians. Him being the Blues captain, American (he hails from Minnesota), and known for playing with an edge was a perfect storm for fans. It was a no-brainer to hand over that moniker to him, especially in 2010.

Why? In a little over a week leading up to the 2010 Olympics he fought three Canadian superstars: Jonathan Toews, Corey Perry, and Rick Nash. The Toews fight is the one I think we all remember most, because he had some, um, issues in the penalty box afterward:

Corey Perry also bit off way more than he could chew, which is impressive considering how much he runs his mouth:

The fight against Rick Nash was much more evenly matched up in terms of size:

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“For me, they’re all top-tier, all-world players,” said Backes. “If I can get under their skin and exchange five minutes with them, it’s well worth it.”

Spoken like a true hero.

His contempt of Canada didn’t end in 2010, though. Oh no. As Brad pointed out in 2012, this was a career long focus of Backes’ and continued well after that silver medal in Vancouver. Backes really liked to score against Canadian teams. At the time, there were six Canadian teams in the league (one game against the Jets is a small sample size) and Backes had over 20% of his goals against them.

By 2014 a good number of Blues fans had moved forward to T.J. Sochi as their Olympian of choice, but it’s important to remember that David Backes put this country on his back for the common good, and that common good was kicking Corey Perry’s ass.

For that, we salute you.