Jonathan Toews is officially back.
The three-time Stanley Cup champion, who last played an NHL game more than two years ago, was introduced Friday as the newest member of his hometown Winnipeg Jets, donning a jersey with his signature No. 19 at a team press conference.
The Jets announced their intention to acquire the 37-year-old centre last month, but it only became official this week with Toews signing a one-year deal worth $2 million US, plus performance bonuses tied to games played and playoff success.
The longtime Chicago captain last played in April of 2023, and on Friday, he told reporters he was just grateful for the opportunity to return to the ice, let alone with his hometown club in front of friends and family.
“It’s an honour and one that has really lit that fire again, that excitement for the game,” Toews said.
“You have these moments throughout your career where, I don’t want to say you get jaded, but you get used to it, and you kind of settle in. This is another moment that kind of brings me back to that new feeling like you’re getting drafted again.”
Toews walked away from the game following the 2022-23 season as he was dealing with symptoms of long COVID and chronic immune response syndrome.
Those health issues kept Toews out of the lineup for the entire 2020-21 season, and he was in and out of the lineup in his final year with Chicago, at one point missing two months of action.
Toews revealed on social media in November that he travelled to India and underwent the Ayurvedic detox Panchakarma, a traditional therapy that uses massage, herbs and diet to cleanse the body, after “almost five years of searching for a way to heal the inflammatory and immune system issues that took me out of hockey.”
He said Friday that he was skeptical about the therapy at first, but had reached a point mentally where he’d try anything.
“I ended up going out there, and I was really happy that I did,” he explained. “As soon as I started following that diet and some of the different herbs and tinctures and just supplements that complement the diet, things started changing really fast.”
“I knew right away that there was something to it.”
He said Friday that after leaving Chicago, he accepted he might never play again and credited that mindset with helping him get healthy.
“I think that was a challenging thing to do, but at the same time a very healthy thing to just wake up every day and not think ‘this is where we’re going,”‘ Toews said. “As the year went along I got stronger every month and I was working out, taking care of myself, but also just enjoying life.”
He said he felt a night-and-day difference when he returned to skating earlier this year compared to his final season in Chicago, which he admitted was a struggle to get through.
“That in itself was just a huge positive and just has really reinforced this positive cycle in a way, too,” said Toews.
“I’m really happy about where I am at. There’s a new energy and new excitement.”
Toews has played 1,067 regular-season NHL games, all with Chicago, recording 372 goals and 511 assists.
In 137 career playoff games, Toews recorded 45 goals and 74 assists. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP in 2010, when he led Chicago to its first championship in more than 40 years.
Toews also helped Canada claim Olympic gold in 2010 and 2014.
Born in Winnipeg, Toews grew up in the city’s St. Vital neighbourhood, where there’s now a community sportsplex named in his honour.
There’s also a lake named after Toews in northwest Manitoba.
Premier Wab Kinew, an outspoken Jets fan, said he thinks Toews coming home to Winnipeg is just what the team needs.
“We have the hometown champ signed with the hometown team to push them over the top,” Kinew told reporters after the press conference.
“It’ll be really good for the documentary they make about the Winnipeg Jets winning the Stanley Cup.”
Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff called Toews’s signing an exciting day for Winnipeg and for Manitoba and said it’s something he’s been thinking about making happen for more than a decade.
Cheveldayoff, an assistant GM in Chicago when Toews and the team won the 2010 Stanley Cup, said that when he joined the Jets the following year, he and Mark Chipman, the chairman of Jets owner True North, mused about the possibility of one day seeing Toews in a Winnipeg jersey.
“At that point in time it was merely a dream or a concept,” Cheveldayoff said.
“Last week, when we finalized everything, I sent Mark a text, and it said ‘Toews is a Jet.’ It was an emotional feeling,” he said.
“One of the most decorated hockey players in Manitoba history is coming home.”
Toews is joining a Jets team that’s coming off a Presidents’ Trophy-winning season as the NHL’s top regular-season club. But earlier this week, Winnipeg lost a key offensive piece when winger Nikolaj Ehlers signed a six-year deal with the Carolina Hurricanes.
