PITTSBURGH (AP) – Pittsburgh Penguins owner-player Mario Lemieux was hospitalized Wednesday for observation of an irregular heartbeat, the latest medical problem for a Hall of Famer who has missed the equivalent of five full seasons due to illness or injury.

Lemieux was to be monitored overnight in an undisclosed hospital and won’t play to night against the Minnesota Wild. The team said his playing status will be day to day after that.

According to Penguins general manager Craig Patrick, Lemieux reported having an irregular heartbeat after practice. “We thought the best precaution was to have him enter the hospital for observation,” Patrick said.

The 40-year-old Lemieux recently missed two games because of what the team described as the stomach flu, but it was not immediately known if an illness that lingered for several weeks was related to his latest problem.

The Hall of Fame center has had numerous medical problems during a career that began in 1984, including a bout with Hodgkin’s disease in 1993 that was partly responsible for him sitting out the 1994-95 season.

Lemieux also has been sidelined for long periods with back and hip problems, and he missed two-thirds of the Penguins’ 1990-91 Stanley Cup championship season with severe lower back pain.

After retiring for 31/2 years, he returned in December 2000 after buying the Penguins and has played since, but missed large portions of the 2001-02 and 2003-04 seasons with hip injuries.

The NHL’s No. 7 career scorer has seven goals and 14 assists for 21 points in 25 games this season, but recently had a four-game streak without a point that was the longest of his career.

Last week, Lemieux missed a team practice so he could be examined by a doctor. At the time, the team said the problem was related to his flu bout.

“They kind of fit him in for a checkup,” coach Eddie Olczyk said on Nov. 30. “He said he was feeling fine, and just wanted to make sure he’s being looked after.”

Lemieux played in Pittsburgh’s last game, getting an assist on Sidney Crosby’s goal – his first point in five games – during a 3-2 loss Saturday to the Calgary Flames.

Lemieux, who captained Canada’s 2002 Olympic gold medal team in Salt Lake City even while playing with a badly injured hip, was to meet with Team Canada general manager Wayne Gretzky on Saturday in Pittsburgh.

With Gretzky’s Phoenix Coyotes on a six-day break until Sunday, Gretzky is scouting possible members to play in the Turin Olympics next February.

Earlier this season, Lemieux said he didn’t want to be picked on his name alone, and that Canada would be better off taking a player such as the 18-year-old Crosby if Lemieux wasn’t playing up to Olympic caliber.

Lemieux got off to a relatively fast start despite being out for nearly two years because of the hip injury and the 2004-05 NHL lockout, and had three multiple-point games in his first 10 games. But he has only one goal and two assists and is a minus-10 in his last 10 games.

For the season, Lemieux’s minus-17 rating is the second worst in the NHL to teammate Mark Recchi’s minus-19. By comparison, Lemieux was a plus-55 while leading the NHL with 160 points during his cancer-interrupted 1992-93 season, despite missing a month for treatment.

Before this season began, Lemieux said he wanted to play a full season uninterrupted by medical problems for the first time since his second season in the league, 1985-86. But he has since said that, at his age, it is probably wise to miss some games to avoid getting worn down.

Lemieux is seventh in NHL career scoring with 1,722 points, seven fewer than No. 6 Steve Yzerman of Detroit. Lemieux is eighth in goals with 690.

AP-ES-12-07-05 2019EST