The Chicago Blackhawks, the NHL's top team in the regular season, is in a precarious position tonight, down 2-1 in the Stanley Cup Finals against a red-hot goalie on the road. They will try to overcome those factors at 8:00 p.m. tonight at TD Garden in Boston in a game that will be televised on NBC and can be live streamed here.
The Blackhawks are expected to get a boost from the return of right winger Marian Hossa, who was shockingly scratched from Game 3 with a mysterious "upper body" injury that Chicago coach Joel Quenneville refuses to elaborate on.
The secrecy runs so deep that Quenneville didn't even let Hossa's replacement, Ben Smith, skate during warmups. "Ben was ready. I knew he was doing everything," Quenneville said. "We were hopeful that Hoss was playing, and Ben was doing everything to get ready. He was ready."
"I'm not going to get (into) exactly what the injury is or where it occurred," Quenneville said. Hossa's teammate Dave Bolland backed up his coach's decision to remain mum on Hossa's ailment saying, "It's sort of a secret society in the hockey world and in the injury world. You don't want other teams having any injury information at all."
Even Shawn Thornton, a Bruins defenseman agreed. "If I'm going out to battle and I have an injury to any part of my body, I don't want the other side to know what it is," Thornton said.
Regardless of the injury specifics, the Blackhawks will welcome Hossa and his firepower back into the lineup as they try to shoot pucks past Tuukka Rask, who has transformed into a near-impenetrable wall this postseason. He has four shutouts in the playoffs, including one in Game 3.
Rask has amassed 120 saves in three games, the first of which went into triple overtime and the second of which had another overtime period. He has faced 125 shots total, allowing just five to get past him.
© Copyright 2024 Sports World News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.