Jonathan Toews Offers Health Update After Years Away from NHL

It’s not clear if Chicago Blackhawks forward and former captain Jonathan Toews will ever return to the NHL, but he offered fans a health update this week and it looks like he’s on the path to living a healthy life. On December 29, 2020, as the league was headed towards a season shortened by the pandemic, the Blackhawks announced that he would be out indefinitely due to an undisclosed illness. Toews missed the entire season. In June 2021, it was learned he had been diagnosed with chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS), adding that he intended to return for the 2021–22 campaign. He didn’t.

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Toews returned for the first half of the 2022–23 season and scored 28 points in 46 games. His health took a turn again midway through the season causing him to miss several weeks. In February of 2023, he had symptoms of long COVID and CIRS.

He returned for a couple of weeks at the end of the season.  On April 13, Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson announced that the team would not re-sign Toews and he became an unrestricted free agent.

Toews didn’t sign with anyone and hasn’t returned to the NHL since. He made a statement that he wasn’t retiring, but it was unclear if he would play the 2023-24 season. He has yet to return to the league and didn’t sign anywhere for the 2024-25 campaign.

He recently provided a huge health update.

Toews Traveled to India On a Healing Journey

Toews took to Instagram on Thursday and gave a detailed rundown of what he’s been up to with photos to explain how he’s been trying to take care of his body and his health.

He wrote:

As some of you may know, I’ve been on a bit of a healing journey. I’ve had many ups and downs, brief moments of hope working with a whole bunch of different doctors and modalities, followed by doubting if things would ever improve. But I recently spent 5 weeks in India undergoing an Ayurvedic detox called a Panchakarma, and I’m happy to say things are trending.

Ayurveda translates to ‘Knowledge of Life’ and has been the healing science of India for over 5,000 years. This system views our bodies as delicate ecosystems, influenced by everything we consume as far as energy, information, thoughts, feelings, and food. In short, it teaches that our health can thrive when we learn to simplify our lives, create space for stillness and better align ourselves with nature’s rhythms. A Panchakarma is a healing protocol designed to restore your health by cleansing and releasing toxins stored deep in the body.

It’s too long of a story to share all the details here, but it’s been almost 5 years of searching for a way to heal the inflammatory and immune system issues that took me out of hockey. The wisdom of Ayurveda has taught me that everything I experience, I am responsible for. Not only did it teach me better diet choices specific to my body type, it has deepened my intuitive relationship with myself and the world around me.

This doesn’t mean Toews is coming back to the game of hockey. But, at least it sounds like he’s starting to get better and maybe that door isn’t completely closed.

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