NHL.com's fantasy staff continues to cover the latest trends and storylines in the League through the lens of NHL EDGE puck and player tracker stats. Today, we look at Jonathan Toews’ bounce-back potential ahead of his return to the NHL with the Winnipeg Jets.
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Jonathan Toews is returning to the NHL next season with his hometown Winnipeg Jets, and his advanced stats from early in the puck and player tracking era suggest he has bounce-back potential upon joining one of the best teams in the League.
Toews, who is 37 years old and has not played in the NHL since 2022-23, is expected to sign with the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners and could play on the Jets’ second or third line. Toews, who has played all 15 of his NHL seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks and was a three-time Stanley Cup champion as their captain, is not eligible to sign a contract with the Jets until July 1, when free agency begins.
Over his two most-recent seasons, Toews was limited to 124 games after Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome kept him out of the entire 2020-21 season and from Feb. 21-April 1, 2023, when he was dealing with the effects of long COVID-19.
Although the Blackhawks missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs over his final two seasons with them, Toews excelled in high-danger areas despite steps back in his overall production. During the 2021-22 regular season, the first year of puck and player tracking data in the NHL, Toews scored nine high-danger goals (73rd percentile), followed by 11 high-danger goals in 2022-23 (77th percentile). In 2022-23, Toews had one of the best high-danger shooting percentages (32.4; 98th percentile) in the League.
