It has been reported this week that two-time World Junior gold medal champion, two-time Olympic gold medal champion, Conne Smyth Trophy winner, Selke Trophy winner, three-time Stanley Cup champion, and long-tenured captain of the Chicago Blackhawks Jonathan Toews will be attempting a return to the NHL for the 2025-26 season.
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Reports
Mark Lazerus of “The Athletic” spoke with Toews and reported in early March that this was a serious effort Toews had been making after two years away from the game.
“I’m not satisfied the way things ended in Chicago,” Toews told Lazerus. “It’s not about proving anything. It’s just that there’s something left in the tank and I want to explore that. I want to go have fun, have a blast, play with passion. But at the same time, I still have some high-level hockey left. I want to be able to step away from the game having said that I’ve given it my all. And I still think there’s something left to give.”
Toews has suffered from Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome and symptoms of long COVID, which forced him to miss the entire 2020-21 season and battle through his last two seasons in the NHL (2021-22 and 2022-23), missing 40 of 164 games and scoring 68 points (27-41=68) in 124 games during that stretch.
Premier NHL insider, TSN’s Pierre LeBrun, reported via social media that Toews had informed his agent, Pat Brisson, he was committed to this comeback effort.
“Jonathan Toews reached out to his agent Pat Brisson yesterday to inform him he's 100 percent committed to coming back to the NHL next season,” LeBrun reported. “Just spoke with Brisson, who says he will start taking calls from NHL teams on Toews now leading up to July 1. Toews, 37, last played in April 2023. He's been working out the last several months to get himself ready for this comeback.”
The Athletic’s Chris Johnston feels there will be no shortage of teams interested in acquiring the 37-year-old based on the lack of available centers on either the trade or free agency markets in the 2025 offseason.
“I think, naturally, given who he is and what he’s done, there’ll be a lot of interest,” Johnston said on his “The Chris Johnston Show” podcast. “I think there’ll be a huge amount of interest in Toews, really, from a lot of top teams in the league. A lot of these teams need centermen, and there’s just not enough supply out there to meet all the demand.”
A third premier insider, SportsNet’s Elliotte Friedman, weighed in on Friday’s edition of his “32 Thoughts” podcast and threw in the Anaheim Ducks as a potential fit.
“The reports are out now that Jonathan Toews is going to do his comeback next year,” Friedman said. “I do wonder if Anaheim takes a shot at this. It makes a lot of sense.”
Connection
The Anaheim Ducks made the single boldest move of the offseason so far when they hired Joel Quenneville as their next head coach. The connection is obvious, as Quenneville coached Toews for over ten years, and the pair hoisted three Stanley Cups together during the Blackhawks' dynastic run in the previous decade.
From Verbeek to Quenneville to Ducks owner Henry Samueli, within the organization, the current Ducks roster is being compared to the Toews-led Blackhawks just before their ascent to perennial cup-contending status.
The reasoning behind a potential Toews addition is plain to see: For a young roster seemingly on the verge of a breakthrough, why not sign the guy who captained those Hawks and played his best hockey in the biggest moments?
Fit
Jonathan Toews last played in the NHL during the 2022-23 season, when he was far from the center who absorbed the most difficult opposing matchups and produced at an automatic 70-point pace.
He scored 31 points (15-16=31) in 53 games, but only 14 of those points came at 5v5. He also wasn’t the defensive stalwart he had once been, and his penalty killing work rate was the second-lowest in his career (1:08 TOI/G).
On the positive end of the spectrum, in 2022-23, his power play output saw a significant bounce back in production, as that’s where he scored 12 points, including nine of his 14 goals. For a Ducks team that deployed the NHL’s worst power play a season ago, adding Toews to a net front/goal line release position would only help in that department.
Though his stride lacked the explosion it once had, Toews’ processing speed never decreased, and with a surprisingly powerful glide, he still covered a substantial amount of ice on a shift-to-shift basis. His game, especially in his later years, was based on details.
It can be argued that the Ducks’ biggest need this offseason is a true two-way middle-six center, one who can kill penalties, buoy depth scoring, and center a matchup line to oppose top scorers. An addition like that would relieve pressure on premium young talent scattered throughout the Ducks' forward group and free up their offensive games significantly. Toews has the potential to become that buoy.
The Ducks were the NHL’s worst faceoff team in 2024-25 (44.6%), and in his career, Toews boasts a 57.3% win rate at the dot, including winning 63.1% of his draws in 2022-23. While faceoff percentage is a minor aspect of building a winning team, the Ducks could use a reliable presence in the circle to win a big faceoff when called upon. There have been few as good as Toews in NHL history in that area.
The stated goal of the 2025-26 Anaheim Ducks is to make the playoffs for the first time since the 2017-18 season. If Toews can manage to return to, or even exceed, his 2022-23 form, he could prove a substantial upgrade to the team’s middle-six and fill an integral position of need to lift the team to those necessary strides toward that goal.
Cap space won’t be an issue for the Ducks in 2025-26, and Toews likely won’t demand a large percentage of the cap, but it could prove an impactful low-risk/high-reward gamble for a young team with lofty goals.
Photo Credit: Apr 11, 2023; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Chicago Blackhawks center Jonathan Toews (19) moves the puck against the Pittsburgh Penguins during the second period at PPG Paints Arena. Chicago won 5-2. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
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