What to make of Jonathan Toews’ comments on the Blackhawks’ moves
It didn’t come as much of a surprise when the 23-32-9 Chicago Blackhawks were sellers at the Trade Deadline.
Chicago shipped out Ryan Carpenter, Marc-Andre Fleury, Brandon Hagel and two fourth-round picks for a bevy of draft picks in return.
They were clear rebuilding moves, and they weren’t received necessarily well by Hawks captain Jonathan Toews.
“I’m not going to lie, it was disheartening to see a couple really good friends go,” Toews said, according to Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times. “When you cultivate that chemistry and that friendship and that connection with your teammates, you want to keep building off of it. So it’s definitely a little disheartening.”
Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna broke down Toews’ comments on the latest episode of The Daily Faceoff Show.
“You see the comments from Jonathan Toews, a guy that really hasn’t held up his end of the bargain as well in terms of his contract and his play of late, where’s this heading?” Seravalli asked McKenna.
“We’re at the big question mark of what happens with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews,” said McKenna. Kane seems to be a lot more supportive of the rebuild. It seems like Chicago is a place that he wants to be and it seems like Toews kind of has one foot out already. I appreciate Toews being honest… But you hear those quotes about things being disheartening, and then I also caught one that really made a difference to me. They asked about his captaincy, and he said, ‘yeah, no doubt some days you just want it to be easy, you want to just say, screw it, focus on your own thing, just lighter, a lot less responsibility.'”
“What I’m hearing here is a player who’s already thinking about what it would be like leaving an organization – what would it be like to play somewhere else? If you’re having doubts, Jonathan Toews, about what it’s like, if you’re having doubts about or even thinking how much better it would be to not be a captain, go somewhere else and have fun. Take the pressure off. Discover your game again, the love for it, because it’s not getting better in Chicago anytime soon. There’s a two-to-four- year gap year before it’s going to be better and your contract is going to be done,” added McKenna.
Seravalli added that there’s likely not going to be many suitors — if any at all — willing to take Toews’ contract, even if Chicago retains salary.
Chicago is at a crossroads as it will soon have to decide if it’s time to phase out the old guard as they look to the future.
Is Toews part of the solution in Chicago? Does he want to be?