Jonathan Toews is done. The Winnipeg Jets have scheduled a press conference for Friday morning where Toews will officially announce his retirement from professional hockey.
According to David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, the presser is set for 11 a.m. CT.
Three Stanley Cup championships. 1,149 career games. 912 points. The 2010 Conn Smythe Trophy. The 2013 Selke Award. The 2015 Messier Leadership Award.
That is not a hockey career. That is a Hall of Fame submission with a bow on it.
Toews spent this past season with the Jets, appearing in all 82 games and finishing with 11 goals and 18 assists for 29 points. He carried a $2 million cap hit. He went minus-20 on a team that finished 35-35-12.
It was a quiet, workmanlike final chapter for a player who once defined what it looked like to be a winner in this league.
What Toews meant to the Jets and to the game itself
Winnipeg under head coach Scott Arniel and GM Kevin Cheveldayoff finished 26th overall this past season, scoring 231 goals against 260 allowed. The team went on a four-game losing streak to close the year.
Toews did not go out lifting trophies. He went out logging shifts on a rebuilding club, doing the job until there was nothing left to give.
That kind of exit is easy to misread. Some players would have walked away years earlier. He didn't.
His five power play goals this season were his last real offensive contribution on the man advantage, a role he once owned at the highest level in Chicago.
The retirement press conference tomorrow closes a chapter that started the moment he was drafted 3rd overall by Chicago back in 2006. Few players in NHL history carried a locker room the way he did for two decades.
The question of whether Toews ever fully recovered from his autoimmune issues in recent years will follow his legacy. He came back. He played. The production never returned to its peak. But he was out there every night.
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Pagnotta's post shows a simple, factual send-off, the kind that fits a player who never needed the spotlight even when it was squarely on him.
The Jets now close the book on a veteran presence in their lineup. What that locker room looks like next October, without a player who has won it all, is a real question GM Kevin Cheveldayoff still has to answer.
Should Jonathan Toews be a first-ballot Hall of Famer?
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