Seriously, Toews the reason for season

It was early November 2008 and Jonathan Toews was sitting quietly in the Blackhawks' dressing room, quickly shedding equipment and occasionally looking up to watch the frenzy.

While the media mobbed several of his teammates, Toews was 12 games into his sophomore season without a goal, and only one reporter approached him after a blowout victory over Colorado.

"Lonely?" I wondered.

"You know, honestly, I don't feel left out at all," Toews told me that night, managing a smile. "We're all chipping in right now and playing a good team game."

Thing is, if it's almost anybody else in that room, if it's almost anybody else in sports, you take it as a halfhearted attempt to sound like a team guy and think it most absurdly disingenuous.

But from Jonathan Toews it is not an emotion. It's the law, because he's as genuine as they come.

They call him "Captain Serious," and that's hardly a term of endearment. It's a mocking banality of a young man as pure as they come in a game that demands pure effort or the suffering of consequences.

Toews doesn't play hockey for fun. He plays hockey to win, and only in winning is there fun.

It's why he takes every lesson from his coach to heart, why he takes every shift as though it were his last, why he plays every game as though there may not be another.

He often plays through pain, as he does right now, though you don't hear about it lest someone use it as an excuse.

He plays for the sweater, rather than awake in a cold sweat to rue the one instant he didn't bust down the ice and turn a vacuous, regular-season 3-on-1 into a 4-on-1.

No endeavor is fruitless in the mind of a workaholic like Toews, destined to be the Hawks' captain long before he donned the jersey.

See, in his mind the trailer on that play may wind up with the rebound that keeps the chance alive, that sends a puck to the corner, that begins an endless cycle, that wears out the opposition defense, that leads to something good next shift, next period, next week or next year.

It doesn't matter. It's what you're supposed to do and so he does it.

That is his wont. That is his way. That is his truth. Responsibility is the ultimate verity in his world of black and white, and sometimes red.

And so he does the dirty work most people never notice, while others get credit and glory. He is in the corners and on the half-boards, picking pockets and taking hits, making sure the most is made of the moment, making sure his end of the ice is defended first.

Make no mistake about why the Hawks are here. It is not about Dustin Byfuglien or Patrick Kane or Antti Niemi.

This works because of Jonathan Toews, the ultimate extension of a brilliant coach, picked at the perfect time for the perfect team and the perfect captain.

While a team effort through and through, it is Toews who insists upon it, and to live hockey is to understand there must be that leadership in the room for the coach to make it work. There must be the example.

A coach's message goes only so far. Without the messenger, one who has earned the respect of his mates and the right to deliver it, there will be freelancers and passengers.

With it you have a team 6 wins from its first Stanley Cup in a half-century.

It is merely a bonus that Toews is getting recognition now for leading all playoff scorers with 23 points, bringing headlines around North America.

The suggestion seen often this week is that Toews has become "the glue" for a red-hot team.

In reality, not in the vacuum that is playoff-based hyperbole, Toews always has been the glue, the backbone, the reason.

Ask him and he'd deflect all praise and prose. Mention his stat sheet and he'd wish to trade every goal for a better goals-against and a higher plus-minus, knowing that with each tick up the Hawks inch closer, one chipped puck at a time, to drinking from Lord Stanley's bowl.

That is the essence of Jonathan Toews, Captain Serious.

Go ahead and deride his demeanor, and then celebrate that he's yours - knowing a bigger celebration may be just around the corner.

• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM.