Quenneville believes Hawks tough enough

A game like Tuesday's 3-1 loss at St. Louis, when the Blues manhandled the Blackhawks physically, to use the words of John Scott, always seems to raise the following question:

Are the Hawks physical enough?

“If we have to be, absolutely,” coach Joel Quenneville said Wednesday. “When you look at our team and you look at our makeup there's certain guys that, obviously, there's more skill there, but the necessary ingredients of being hard and playing hard and coming up for loose pucks is the best measuring stick for hockey players.

“When we're committed to doing that we're fine.”

For the last few years the Hawks have been considered more of a finesse team. Last season's Stanley Cup team was plenty tough as well, but sandpaper guys such as Andrew Ladd, Ben Eager and Adam Burish are gone along with the physical presence Dustin Byfuglien brought.

Scott offered an honest analysis of how the Hawks stack up physically.

“That's my job and Jake (Dowell's) job, to go in there and muck it up, but we could be more physical, definitely,” Scott said. “I think we're the most skilled team in the league, but we're not going to win any games if we're not physical.

“We're just going to get beat out of the rink.

“We've got to have that hard-edge style a little bit and keep that talent and finesse style, too.”

The D'Agostini hit:

Should the hard check by Matt D'Agostini on Jonathan Toews that injured the captain's shoulder have drawn a response from one of the Hawks on the ice at the time?

That question was put to Joel Quenneville on Wednesday.

“Whether it's that play, we should have sent a better message throughout the game,” Quenneville said. “That was probably the thing that was disappointing, whether it was that incident or the entire game.

“There wasn't the competitive level we need as a team to be successful. You can look at that incident or several others that were disappointing.”

Tough practice:

It wasn't a bag skate, but Joel Quenneville worked his team hard in practice Wednesday in the aftermath of Tuesday's poor showing at St. Louis.

“I was one of those practices that you probably don't need to do if we had done it last night,” Quenneville said. “Hopefully we don't have to do too many more like that.”

Tip-ins:

Corey Crawford said he still is not back to full strength after his bout with the flu, meaning Marty Turco starts again Thursday night against San Jose at the United Center. … Fernando Pisani (flu) didn't practice Wednesday and won't play. … Troy Brouwer and Niklas Hjalmarsson didn't practice either but will play.