Former Chicago Blackhawks captain and three-time Stanley Cup champion Jonathan Toews is eyeing a return to the NHL in the fall, according to a report Thursday.
TSN analyst Pierre LeBrun posted on social media that 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 added that Brisson will begin fielding interest from teams leading up to the opening of free agency July 1.
Toews, who turned 37 on April 29, last played in the Hawks’ 2022-23 season finale against the Philadelphia Flyers on April 13, 2023.
It had been publicized before that game that Toews would not receive a new contract offer from the Hawks, so he received a hero’s send-off from the United Center crowd and capped his final performance for the team with a second-period power-play goal.
Toews missed all of 2020-21 and two months of his last Hawks season with extremely painful and lethargic symptoms he has attributed to chronic immune response syndrome and long COVID-19.
Since stepping away from the game, Toews has expressed a desire to return once he gets a handle on his health problems.
He went on a five-week “healing journey” to India, employing a “Ayurvedic detox (program) called a Panchakarma,” which he explained in an Instagram post and an interview with GQ magazine, published in December 2024.
With the help of an Ayurvedic practitioner, solutions included changing his diet and taking herbal tinctures to help with inflammation and digestion.
“There’s a part of me that really doesn’t feel like my career is over yet,” he told GQ, “and who knows what this next part of the journey looks like, as far as getting back on the ice and trying to make a return to the NHL. There’s never any guarantees in life, but I’m going to give it my best shot.”
