Jonathan Toews’ title has slowly begun slipping from hockey dialogue. He led a star-studded profession with the Chicago Blackhawks from 2007-23, serving because the crew’s captain for 14 seasons and main the crew to 3 Stanley Cup wins.
Toews remained an incredible lineup piece lengthy after Chicago began to lose their luster — however the 2020s introduced a problem with nagging accidents that the franchise centerman couldn’t overcome. He introduced in December 2020 that he’d miss everything of the upcoming, shortened 2020-21 season resulting from an undisclosed sickness, later revealed to be Persistent Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS).
Toews rehabbed and returned from the sickness in 2021-22, and whereas he returned to a productive top-line function — the sickness nonetheless pressured him out of 38 video games between 2021-22 and 2022-23. Toews introduced on the finish of the 2023 summer season that he could be stepping away from hockey to give attention to therapeutic.
That journey took him via rounds of other medication, pure therapeutic, and even a five-week journey to India to follow Ayurveda — a standard therapeutic method. Toews just lately returned from the cross-world journey and opened up to GQ Magazine about what he learned, how he’s feeling, and what future could lie forward.
Toews opened the interview by explaining that his battles with sickness ran deeper than beforehand foretold. He shared {that a} lifelong battle with digestive and immune system points hit a flare in his second season within the league — the 2008-09 season, when a 20-year-old Toews was named Chicago’s captain. He struggled to eat or sleep, and ended up working with a crew of medical doctors to craft a weight loss plan tailor-made to his wants.
That helped Toews get via the following 10 seasons — the place he scored 624 factors in 721 video games, earned three All-Star bids, and gained three Stanley Cups — however he says he by no means as soon as felt like his sickness was totally behind him.
