Welcome to NHL99, The Athletic’s countdown of the best 100 players in modern NHL history. We’re ranking 100 players but calling it 99 because we all know who’s No. 1 — it’s the 99 spots behind No. 99 we have to figure out. Every Monday through Saturday until February we’ll unveil new members of the list.
You rolled your eyes when you saw this headline, didn’t you? It’s all right, you can admit it.
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You’re braced for another story waxing poetic about the mythical and unquantifiable Jonathan Toews, Leader of Men. You’re cringing at the thought of Hockey Men fawning all over Toews for his indefinable intangibles that inspire other Hockey Men, of another retelling of how he willed his teams to championships through sheer defiance and fire, or of when the great Sidney Crosby, out of respect for a rival, sought Toews’ blessing before being named captain of Team Canada for the Sochi Olympics.
You might even be a little indignant about Toews being here at all, at No. 65, given some of the names that have come before him on The Athletic’s countdown of the greatest players in the modern era.
Ah, but you forgot. You forgot about the 12 straight 20-goal seasons to start his career. You forgot about the way defenders bounced off of him as he protected the puck and worked that heavy stride down low. You forgot about how critical he was to two Olympic gold medals. You forgot the way he carved through piles of snow as skillfully as he carved through the Pittsburgh defense at Soldier Field en route to one of the prettier goals you’ll see.
You forgot that, for a few years there, Toews was the second-best player in the world, sparking very real conversations across North America (well, across Canada, at least) about who you’d rather build a team around, Crosby or Toews.
No, Toews didn’t lead the Blackhawks to their first championship in 49 years and win the Conn Smythe Trophy through the force of his personality. He did it by posting 29 points in 22 playoff games.
The 2013 Blackhawks weren’t one of the great juggernauts in modern hockey history because Toews collected 20 bucks a head and personally rented a rink and ran practices during the lockout. They were great largely because their No. 1 center had 23 goals and 25 assists in 47 games, with a ridiculous (and league-leading) 63.35 expected goals-for percentage and an even more ridiculous 73.33 actual goals-for percentage (outscoring opponents 44-16 when he was on the ice).
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The Blackhawks didn’t rally to win the 2015 Western Conference finals against Anaheim just because of Toews’ willpower. They rallied because Toews scored five goals over the last four games of the seven-game series, including two in the first period of Game 7 to end the suspense right away.
Toews the myth has long since obscured Toews the player. But from 2009 through 2014, no forward in the league had a higher expected goals percentage than Toews’ 59.4. He has 364 career goals and is three assists away from 500. All while playing Selke-caliber defense for most of his career.
He’s also the league’s all-time leader in shootout goals, converting 51 times on 109 shots (seemingly all of them slick five-hole slip-ins), the fourth-highest success rate of anyone with at least 50 attempts. He’s in the top 10 in faceoffs since the league began keeping track in 1997-98 with a 57.1 winning percentage. And he was always at his best when the games mattered most, posting 45 goals and 74 assists in 137 playoff games, and 13 goals and 20 assists in 31 elimination games.
Never mind the myth-making. Jonathan Toews was really good.
“Maybe people forget that on the outside,” Patrick Kane said. “But not in our locker room.”
(Mike Stobe / NHLI via Getty Images)
At the peak of his powers, Jonathan Toews was the second-best player in the world. No one was touching Sid — hell, no one was even close. But Toews was next.
That’s not because he was Captain Serious and it’s not because he had the rings. It’s because he was that good. From 2009 to 2014, there was no more consistently complete player than Toews — no one who played a better 200-foot game.
That’s not myth-making, it’s borne from data; better data than what was available during Toews’ apex — just the beginning of the analytics boom. Looking back at the five-year pinnacle of his career reveals a player who was more than worthy of his mythos.
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There’s an argument to be made for a lot of players from that era to be second in line behind Crosby. Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Steven Stamkos, and the Sedins dominated scoresheets. Pavel Datsyuk, Patrice Bergeron and Anze Kopitar were world-class two-way forces.
There were players who scored more goals and more points. There were players who had a bigger impact offensively or a bigger impact defensively. Aside from Crosby, there was no one who combined it all into one premium package like Toews did during those five years. And consistently, too.
All-in-one stats didn’t really exist at the time, but they do now, and they paint a very vivid picture of what Toews’ total value once was. It’s one that echoes what many in the game were saying at the time — a thought that once received plenty of backlash, but looks spot-on with the benefit of hindsight.
From 2009 to 2014, Toews was worth 18.1 wins. Only Crosby was worth more at 18.9. In those five years, Toews averaged 4.4 wins per 82 games. Again, only Crosby was better at 6.0 wins per 82 games.
The company Toews is keeping here is incredible.
What helps Toews’ case is how consistent he was year in and year out during his absolute prime — something some of his contemporaries lacked. In 2009-10, he played at a 4.3-win pace. In 2010-11, he played at a 3.9-win pace. In 2011-12, he played at a 4.1-win pace. In 2013-14, he played at a 4.1-win pace. All seasons in which he was right near the very top of the league thanks to his blend of strong production and two-way ability.
It was the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season that really cemented his place during that stretch of time. It was Toews’ best season, the year he won his only Selke Trophy, and the year he earned his highest finish in Hart Trophy voting: fourth. In hindsight, he should’ve been a finalist.
In 2012-13, Toews scored 48 points in 47 games, his only season as a point-per-game player. On top of that, he had a 63-percent expected goals rate at five-on-five — a mark that led the league and was the highest of his career — and outscored opponents by a whopping 44-15 margin. At five-on-five, he was a man possessed and that put his total value at 3.5 wins in just 47 games. That’s a 6.1-win pace. Only Crosby was better at 3.7 wins in 36 games.
If we’re talking about Toews’s prime, his peak, his pinnacle, his apex — that season was the absolute summit of his best years. Naturally, he capped it off with a Stanley Cup. A perfect season.
It’s at the end of that season where Toews’ place in the game’s hierarchy was at its loudest and most fervent. He may not have been on Crosby’s level, but anyone who said he was the closest one was damn right. He was.
(Getty Images)
Kane was the flashy one. Kane was “Showtime,” all dekes and dangles and spin-o-ramas. They’re inextricably linked in Blackhawks history — Toews and Kane, Kane and Toews — but they were immediately slotted into distinct roles upon their arrival in the fall of 2007. Kane was the offensive star, Toews the two-way force. Kane scored highlight-reel goals, Toews killed penalties. Kane made no-look backdoor passes, Toews crashed the net and cashed in the loose change.
But that was by design. Toews played that way because he could play that way, and because the Blackhawks needed him to play that way. Every team has a few snipers. Not every team could trot out a top line of Toews flanked by Marián Hossa and Brandon Saad or Patrick Sharp, a couple of three-headed two-way behemoths that simply owned the puck.
Sometimes, Toews admitted he was a little jealous of the offensive freedom Kane had. Deep down, he knew he could be that kind of player — or pretty close, at least — if he would cherry-pick just a bit more, cheat a bit more, be the first one to break out of the zone a bit more.
But three championships and a Selke Trophy went a long way toward quieting that urge.
“You appreciate it, right?” Kane said. “I mean, there are different ways of playing the game and being successful and producing offense. Even short-handed, those guys — Hossa and Tazer played together short-handed — they were always a threat short-handed, too. Just that down-low game. Even nowadays when I’m on the ice with him, it’s like, let’s get in position. I don’t really like just throwing the puck away, but it’s different when it’s him. If you just throw it to him behind the net, he’ll make a play. We’ve seen that a lot of times over the years, the different ways to produce offense.”
And Toews did produce. During those peak years from 2009-2014, Toews averaged 0.94 points a game at a time when 100-point seasons were still a rarity. That tied him with Claude Giroux for the 17th-best scoring rate in the league, and was just two-one-hundredths of a point out of 11th. At No. 10? Kane. So even if he didn’t have the pizzazz of Kane, he was pretty much just as productive.
Toews, of course, demurs at all of this. In fact, his first reaction to being on this list was probably the same as yours. Hell, even back in 2014, he literally laughed out loud at the Crosby comparison before a preseason game in Pittsburgh. And in typical Toews fashion, he remains unsatisfied with one of the best runs any player in modern NHL history has had.
“I guess so,” he shrugged when asked if that was his best stretch of hockey. “I think even in those seasons, I was always pretty disappointed with the stats I was putting up in the regular season. But we’d get to the playoffs, and things just kind of clicked. I mean, it’s nice to hear those comparisons to a guy like Crosby. And obviously, I was pretty effective in my own ways. But I don’t know. There were so many great players on those teams that we all elevated each other. I mean, when you have who we had on the blue line, and I’ve got Brandon Saad and Marián Hossa on my wings. … I don’t know, if you want to go ahead and write that, that I was in the mix, then sure, go ahead and do it. But I don’t think I ever thought of myself that highly in any way.”
His teammates always did, though. It’s why they put up with his histrionics on the bench, whether he was squabbling with Kane in the early days over a botched two-on-one or reading his linemates the riot act after they got hemmed in their own end too long. In the early days and the glory days, Toews was all fire and fury, and he could cross the line and push too hard.
Letting go was never his strong suit. He took the work home with him, and he took it back to the bench with him, too.
“There were games where if we didn’t have the puck and we weren’t in the offensive zone controlling the play, that’s when I would just really lose it and just completely run out of patience,” Toews said, with a touch of embarrassment looking back. “It was just an expectation to have the puck, to be heavy on it, to control the play. And eventually, that’s how things developed. I figured it was our job to score goals. And how are we going to score if we’re not dominant?”
The one guy he rarely yelled at was Hossa, who carried so much respect among the Blackhawks roster.
“I would give him a little shit once in a while, just unreasonably wanting the puck when you’re not even open,” Toews said. “But he was the hardest guy to be honest with because you knew he could fire back at you with 20 more things.”
But even Hossa didn’t mind, because he knew the fire that burned within Toews was what drove him to such great heights on the ice.
“He was just a nice guy away from the rink,” Hossa said. “He just wanted to win so bad, and sometimes when things were not going well when he was younger, when things weren’t coming as he wished all the time, then he could get frustrated. But he always meant it well, even when he was frustrated.”
In other words, when you can back it up with your play, you can talk all you want. And Toews always backed it up. It’s what made him the indispensable Blackhawk. On a team laden with stars, there were always other wingers who could fill the net when Kane was out. Niklas Hjalmarsson could always step into the top pairing if Brent Seabrook missed a game. Corey Crawford had a string of terrific backups in Ray Emery, Antti Raanta and Scott Darling. And the Blackhawks routinely churned out fourth-line gems, giving them forward depth that was always the envy of the league.
But on the rare occasions Toews was out — particularly when he suffered a concussion during the 2011-12 season and ended up playing just 59 games — the whole roster seemed to fall apart. Nobody could do all the things that Toews could do, let alone do any of them as well as he could.
“Whenever there were games when Tazer was out of our lineup, it just seemed like such a big hole,” Kane said. “Like something was missing. It’s always been like that with him. You can’t replace him.”
By now, you’ve probably noticed how much the past tense has been used in this story. Toews was the second-best player in the world. Toews was a dominant two-way force like few others in the game. Toews was as demanding and as commanding a presence as any in Blackhawks history.
It’s true, Toews no longer is the player he once was. The aging curve caught Toews earlier than many of his contemporaries, the physical toll of his style of play and all those deep playoff runs evident in recent seasons. A year away from the game dealing with a debilitating medical condition left him a shell of himself when he returned last season. His legs just weren’t there. The energy was missing. That distinct heavy stride looked a touch weaker and a lot slower.
Just two years removed from his best offensive season, a 35-goal, 81-point 2018-19 campaign, Toews looked, well, he looked cooked. As he entered the last year of his contract this season, much of the hockey world wondered if he’d just retire rather than allow himself to be traded at the deadline.
But Toews isn’t quite done yet.
Finally healthy and with a looser personality and a live-in-the-now mentality that are the byproducts of that most trying year away from the one thing in the world that meant the most to him — hockey — Toews is having a throwback season. He’s playing that heavy style of hockey he loves so much, making plays below the goal line and shrugging off defenders while dominating the puck. He’s been the Blackhawks’ best player this season, and it frankly isn’t even close.
At 34 years old, with the whole hockey world writing him off, he looks like Jonathan Toews again. And those who remember the man before he became the myth — who remember the tangibles just as well as the intangibles — know just how good that is.
(Top photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)