By Fluto Shinzawa, Globe Staff

In an interview with 98.5 The Sports Hub this afternoon, Mark Recchi emphasized how thankful he was that Max Pacioretty is recovering from the March 8 hit that left him with a fractured vertebra and a severe concussion. Pacioretty could play in the playoffs.

But Recchi speculated that the Canadiens embellished the nature of Pacioretty's concussion to prompt the league to suspend Zdeno Chara.

"He does obviously have a fractured vertebra, but the concussion is obviously really a non-factor," said Recchi, citing how Pacioretty attended a movie several days after the hit. "In maybe a day or two -- maybe a day he felt it -- but he was fine a couple days later. They were trying to get Zdeno suspended and they embellished it a little bit. In terms of that side, they're doing whatever they could to get him suspended. I think the league sent a message that it was a hockey play. That's the important thing and people have to understand. If they deemed it something that was serious, they suspended Matt Cooke up to 17 games for a head shot. They're serious about protecting the players now. That was an interference play at worst. The partitions got in the way. I don't think Zdeno is to blame for that."

Most NHL teams qualify concussions as mild, moderate, or severe. While definitions vary, general sentiment is that a player must have lost consciousness and suffered memory loss for a concussion to be termed severe.

You can listen to the full interview here.