When Marian Hossa signed a monster twelve-year contract with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2009 he came to the team having played for the Stanley Cup runner-up the two previous seasons (2009 Detroit Red Wings and 2008 Pittsburgh Penguins). After winning two Stanley Cups with the Blackhawks, his career is more “complete.”
But he’s always been a very special player. Even though he goes overlooked sometimes. Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are the faces of the franchise. After that, Patrick Sharp is the fan favorite. (Especially female fans). In terms of “star power,” a very unscientific and arbitrary metric (Highly debatable too), Marian Hossa might even be behind Duncan Keith and Corey Crawford too.
So despite being 5th or 6th banana (from a visibility standpoint anyway) on his own team, the Czechoslovakian right wing is a phenomenal, invaluable two-way star. The NHL on NBC’s lead announce team was on media conference call and I asked all about Hos.
Eddie Olczyk on Hossa: “He can change the momentum of a game with the way that he pursues the puck.. He may not get the publicity of Toews, Bergeron or Datsyuk, but he really is one of those dynamic two-way players, and to get the appreciation of evaluating a player, it’s not necessarily when they have the puck, it’s how they play without the puck, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a smarter all-around player in the entire NHL than Marian Hossa.”
“I think the hockey community knows how great of a two-way player Marian Hossa is,” said Olczyk.
“Maybe the fan base or the public doesn’t realize it because he’s not always a guy that maybe gets the accolades, the headlines or Selke nominees, but if you ask anyone that’s played with him or coached him or followed him for a long period of time, he would be a guy that I would tell young hockey players to sit down and watch his last 100 shifts.”
Indeed, the 12th overall pick by Ottawa in 1997 has been doing it, and doing it well for 16 years.
Pierre McGuire on Marian Hossa: “He’s only been a minus player twice in his career. Once was in his first year, and the other time was when he was playing for that powerhouse down in Atlanta, the Atlanta Thrashers. That is an amazing accomplishment. One of the players that I use as a bellwether because he’s played for so long and just recently retired, three-time Stanley Cup winner Mark Recchi.”
“He told me the most under-appreciated player he ever played with was Marian Hossa because of his all-around game but especially his defensive awareness.”
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and very often writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2