Former Blackhawk Tony Amonte said Marian Hossa missing Monday's Game 3 loss to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup finals was "just not good enough" and questioned the pain threshold of the Chicago star.
"You're in the Stanley Cup finals. I think you play until you can't play anymore," Amonte, a Bruins analyst for Comcast SportsNet New England, told WEEI-FM in Boston on Tuesday. "You give whatever you can to your organization and that's the way most guys will do it. That's what [Bruins forward] Nathan Horton's doing right now. He's probably got no right being out on the ice with that shoulder the way it is but he's going to gut it out, play the next possibly four games at the most and then go in, get his shoulder fixed and be ready for the next season."
After participating in pregame warm-up, Hossa was a surprise late scratch right before Game 3. An NBC broadcaster reported that Hossa was hit with a puck during warm-ups which was refuted by coach Joel Quenneville. Hossa was replaced by Ben Smith, who did not warm up before the game, won by the Bruins 2-0 for a 2-1 series lead.
"Marian Hossa ... I admire the way he plays, he's a very good player, he's got a Stan ley Cup on his resume, but he's not the guy with the highest pain threshold in the NHL," Amonte said Monday night on Comcast. "If you look back to his stats and you look throughout his career, he usually plays about 60 games, takes about 20 or 30 off every year just to make sure he's fresh coming into the postseason. He's not a guy that will play through a lot of injuries."
Amonte might have been referring to Hossa's intensity level during regular season games because Hossa has played at least 78 games in eight of his 14 NHL seasons. Injuries kept him out of eight games during the lockout-shortened regular season.
On Tuesday, Quenneville said Hossa has an upper-body injury and is likely to play in Game 4 on Wednesday night in Boston. Quenneville said the Hawks knew of the possibility Hossa wouldn't play, and that it had nothing to do with anything that happened in warm-ups. The coach said he didn't want to tip his hand about Hossa not playing, which is why Smith didn't skate before the game.
Hawks forward Bryan Bickell wrote in his blog for NHL.com on Tuesday that the players knew that Hossa was a game-time decision.
"We knew earlier in the day that [Hossa] could be a game-time decision, but he took warm-ups and skated all the way through like he was going to play," Bickell wrote. "But, Hossa came into the room about 10 minutes before we were going on the ice and addressed the team, basically telling us that he was sorry, but he didn't feel he could be an effective player for us Monday night because of his injury.
Bickell wrote that Hossa told the team "he needs a couple of extra days to make it better so he can be an effective player."
ESPNChicago.com's Scott Powers contributed to this report.
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