Jonathan Toews retires after 16 seasons in the NHL
Three-time Stanley Cup champion Jonathan Toews announced his retirement on Friday, ending his playing career with 1,149 regular-season games and 137 playoff games. He made the announcement at the Jonathan Toews Sportsplex in Winnipeg — formerly the Dakota Community Centre — where he played for the Dakota Lazer as a child.
Toews, 38, finished his career with his hometown Winnipeg Jets after playing 15 seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks, where he became the youngest captain in franchise history. It was in Chicago that Toews won the 2010, 2013 and 2015 Stanley Cup titles, the 2010 Conn Smythe Trophy, the 2013 Selke Award and the 2015 Mark Messier Leadership Award. In Winnipeg, Toews was given the Keys to the City in 2010, while also being honored with the renaming of a lake near Flin Flon. Toews also won two Olympic gold medals and two World Junior championships for Team Canada.
Toews’ career was interrupted by a variety of health-related issues, including long COVID and Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), that first started impacting him in 2020. Toews returned to the NHL in 2025-26 after missing the entirety of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons and played in all 82 games for the Jets. Toews scored 11 goals and 18 assists for 29 points, bringing his career totals to 383 goals, 529 assists and 912 points. He added 119 points in 137 playoff games, increasing his point-per-game output during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Toews said in April that he’d make a decision about his playing career “probably in the next couple of weeks to a month.”
“I’m just taking it one day at a time and trying to enjoy it even when it’s not going great, you’re not feeling great,” Toews said. “You take the good with the bad, that’s part of being an NHL hockey player. Again, I’m so grateful to this organization, to Mark (Chipman) and (Kevin Cheveldayoff) and the coaching staff and the boys in the locker room for making me feel at home here. And the fans and the city of Winnipeg, it’s been so special.”
Toews was a finalist for the 2026 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, given to “the National Hockey League player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey.”
His retirement announcement at his community arena came with additional significance. According to the community centre’s website, Toews became the Honorary Chair of the Dakota Futures Campaign in 2016 and kicked off fundraising efforts for the continued expansion of the community centre with a $1 million gift. The facility has borne Toews’ name since 2010, when former Mayor Sam Katz sought to acknowledge Toews’ first Stanley Cup win. In 2014, the main building was renamed the Jonathan Toews Sportsplex, with the greater community centre and associated campus reverting to being called the Dakota Community Centre.
Toews’ legacy
His attempt to revive his career with his hometown Jets didn’t play out as he had hoped, the ultimate playoff competitor hoping for one last run at a fourth Stanley Cup. But he’ll, of course, be most remembered for his tenure in Chicago, during which he captained the Blackhawks to three championships and cemented himself as one of the most iconic athletes in the city’s history. Perpetually paired with Patrick Kane, who was taken No. 1 in 2007, a year after Toews was taken third, the duo reawakened a moribund franchise and a dormant hockey city.
Kane was the flashier of the two, but Toews was the face, the voice and the heart of the team’s peak years. Named captain at just 20 years old, back before that was relatively commonplace, Toews quickly earned his “Captain Serious” nickname with his singular, almost maniacal competitive nature. That mindset carried over to his play, where he molded himself into one of the league’s elite two-way players, a grinder capable of breathtaking skill, a defense-first guy who could score at any moment.
The myth became almost bigger than the man, but even amid all the clichés about leadership and tenacity, Toews at one point was considered arguably the second-best player in the world, right up there with Sidney Crosby as the player you’d most want to build a team around. His peak wasn’t nearly as long as Crosby’s, but there’s a reason he was No. 65 on The Athletic’s NHL99 ranking.
But his body started to give way before his will and skill did. Toews missed the entire COVID season of 2020-21 as he rebuilt his strength and stamina, but he was never the same player again. In 2018-19, he had 35 goals and 81 points in 82 games. After his lost season, he never again scored more than 15 goals or posted more than 37 points. He functionally retired after the 2022-23 season when the Blackhawks nudged him out the door, general manager Kyle Davidson declining to offer him a new contract as he shifted to a harsh rebuild, wanting to “clear the decks” for a new leadership group to emerge. But after a long, circuitous two-year “health journey,” Toews decided he had unfinished business at 37.
“I’m not satisfied with the way things ended in Chicago,” Toews told The Athletic in March 2025. “It’s not about proving anything. It’s just that there’s something left in the tank and I want to explore that. I want to go have fun, have a blast, play with passion. But at the same time, I still have some high-level hockey left. I want to be able to step away from the game having said that I’ve given it my all. And I still think there’s something left to give.”
Winnipeg hoped Toews could be their No. 2 center, but it was asking a lot of a 37-year-old coming off two seasons away. Toews had flashes of his old self — still dominant at the faceoff dot, still competitive — but he was a step slower, not as strong on the puck, not as capable of playing the heavy style he built his career on.
Toews’ year in Winnipeg will likely go down with Bobby Orr’s year in Chicago, Willie Mays’ year with the New York Mets, Joe Montana’s two years with the Kansas City Chiefs — a footnote, a trivia answer. But he had no regrets about chasing his NHL dream one last time.
“There’s definitely — I don’t know if prestige is the right word, but it’s pretty cool to be that guy that ultimately was a cornerstone of a team his entire career,” he told The Athletic in October. “That’s something you take pride in. But it’s pro sports, right? You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do for your career sometimes, and go where the opportunities are. It’s nice to be the guy who didn’t switch sides. There’s an aspect of that in my mind. But it is what it is. The Hawks wanted to move on. It was probably best for me, too.”
© 2026 The Athletic Media Company. All Rights Reserved. Distributed by New York Times Licensing.