VANCOUVER — No, for the record, Jonathan Toews doesn’t plan to retreat into a completely dark room for four days to make a decision on his future in the NHL.
“No, no, I don’t think I’ll have to get that extreme,” he said with a smirk.
Instead, when the Blackhawks’ season ends next week and he’s done cleaning out his locker and going through his exit interviews and bro-hugging his teammates, Toews will go about things the traditional way. He’ll talk to his girlfriend. To his family. To his closest friends. To the people “who know me better than anybody.”
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But mostly, he’ll talk to himself. He’ll look within — to see how badly he wants to continue his career, how important hockey still is to him, how willing he is to continue fighting through the fatigue and pain and emotional struggle that come with his dual diagnoses of Long COVID and Chronic Immune Response Syndrome. Because if the answer to any of those questions is anything less than 100 percent, then the answer is obvious.
Because the NHL is all or nothing. You can’t play in this league half-hearted.
“Right now, you ask me that question and the honest answer is, I got no idea,” Toews said in a quiet conversation with The Athletic following Thursday’s morning skate in Vancouver. “No idea whether I return to play for the Blackhawks next year, or play for another team, or I decide to move on to other things. I can tell the media wants to ask me about my so-called ‘pending retirement,’ even though I never said those words. But it’ll be a process of just feeling out what I truly feel inspired to do.
“But at this point, I’ve realized there’s no point in continuing to stomach this struggle. So if it’s not a hell yeah, then it’s a hell no.”
For three years now, Jonathan Toews’ body has been at war with his mind, with his heart, with his desire.
But he wanted to play again. He 𝙝𝙖𝙙 to play again.
And he deserved his ovation Saturday, writes @MarkLazerus. And Chicago deserved it too.https://t.co/TlLD0VXyYr
— The Athletic NHL (@TheAthleticNHL) April 2, 2023
Toews continues to talk about that struggle, to be open with his daily difficulties and his conflicted emotions. He’s been doing it for nearly two years now. And he’s talked to reporters nearly every day since his surprise return to the ice last month after nearly two months away from the team once his symptoms became too overwhelming. Toews talks about his health, about his future, about his feelings.
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Naturally, being a hockey player, he hates it. To him, it feels a little bit like whining, like singling himself out in a sport that discourages such things. He knows his teammates are all dealing with nagging injuries, bumps and bruises at the end of a long and grueling season. But his are different. And there are countless other people dealing with something similar post-pandemic. His voice, his experience, can help.
“At this point, I’m feeling a little bashful about continuing to talk about this — it’s like a running excuse that I have for my off nights,” Toews said with a laugh. “I’ve got a really good scapegoat now. Everyone’s playing through something. But I think the experience itself has definitely helped me understand what some people go through, and how everyone’s going through something that, at some point, can be difficult to talk about, and difficult to be open and vulnerable about.”
So Toews talks about the fatigue. About the breathing issues. About the uncertainty. The famously competitive perfectionist, who spent years chasing what he used to call “total human optimization,” talks about how one of the hardest things has been lowering his own bar, adjusting his own standard, because to “constantly fall short of it is a mental and emotional roller-coaster.”
It hasn’t gotten as bad as it did more than two years ago, when he missed an entire NHL season, when there were days he could barely scrape himself off the couch and walk to the kitchen to fix himself a meal. But Toews acknowledged on Thursday that at no point since he returned to the ice in the summer of 2021 has he felt like he was at 100 percent. Not once. Not even early this season, when he scored seven goals in his first 11 games and was looking like his old self.
He is feeling better now. “Pretty good,” even. Far better the day after his second game back than the day after his first game back. He got to the rink on Thursday feeling good, feeling excited about something as mundane as a morning skate. Oh, sure, sometimes he’s had to cut a shift short, unable to make it all the way down the ice on the backcheck after working too hard in the corner on the forecheck, calling for an early change. Sometimes his breath isn’t there, sometimes it’s his legs. But he’s come a long way in a short time the past few weeks, and he’s “seeing some really good progress.” And he’ll take that, even if he knows it’s nowhere near where he wants to be, where, deep down, he defiantly believes he still can be.
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“It’s definitely been a challenge where, in my mind I know what I’m capable of, but my body just refuses to cooperate,” he said. “That’s been a learning experience, to learn a new level of patience that clearly I didn’t used to have.”
Toews was smiling as he said that last bit, a knowing nod to his long-gone Captain Serious persona. That guy couldn’t bear to endure a lost shift, let alone a lost game. He lived and died with each moment on the ice, and took it home with him every night. It was a demeanor and an obsession that served him well, with three Stanley Cups, two Olympic gold medals, a Conn Smythe and a Selke Trophy to his name.
He mellowed out significantly as he got older, long before his lost season in 2021. And now, he’s a truly wizened veteran, approaching his 35th birthday and carrying the kind of perspective that only age and a career-threatening illness can provide.
But don’t mistake that worldliness for weariness. The fire still burns. Toews might not have anything left to prove, but here’s the thing about playing hockey at a high level and competing for championships — it’s fun as hell.
“There’s no doubt I’d love to know what that feels like again, to play hockey on the biggest stage and enjoy the spotlight and have an entire city on your back,” he said. “When you’re going through something real with your teammates, where you’re pushing through a lot and working through things together and figuring out how to reach the peak of the hockey world together. Nothing replaces that. You always kind of long for that experience.”
"Never mind the myth-making. Jonathan Toews was really good."
And the data backs up just how valuable he's been.@MarkLazerus and @domluszczyszyn on No. 65 of The Athletic's #NHL99.
— The Athletic NHL (@TheAthleticNHL) November 21, 2022
Toews is a young man. He doesn’t want to retire. But he doesn’t want to cling desperately to a career to which he’s not fully committed, for which he’s not fully prepared — mentally or physically. That’s what he’ll be thinking about this offseason. That’s what he’ll be talking about with his girlfriend, with his family, with his closest friends, with the people who know him best. That’s what he’ll have to decide.
Is he all in?
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Because if he’s not, then he’s all out.
“There’s more to life than hockey, so it’s a weighing of my options and what feels right,” he said. “All these years, hockey’s been the One Thing. There hasn’t been much else in my life. And part of me is seeking some balance. So I guess we’ll see.”
(Photo of Jonathan Toews: Sergei Belski / USA Today)
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