But if you’ve been listening to him since this summer, he has already convinced himself. Is Toews back? It’s way too early to say that. It took him 16 minutes to score his first goal this season, finding some open ice and burying a Philipp Kurashev pass for a power-play goal in the opener. It took Toews 26 games to score his first goal last season. In Las Vegas, he was poaching passes at the blue line and creating offense, forechecking with the kind of abandon we haven’t seen in years and leading Chicago’s most effective line (with Tyler Johnson and Taylor Raddysh) for the second straight night. In Denver, Toews had a jump in his step, aggression to his game and that fire that has fueled him for a decade and a half, whether he was barking at the referees for calls he disagreed with or dressing down his teammates when Seth Jones got stuck on the ice for a 2:17 shift and the Blackhawks kept turning over the puck. It was a competitive effort overall for Chicago, which was punchless on offense but got a terrific 36-save performance from Alex Stalock, making just his second NHL appearance in 26 months, and went 3-for-3 on the penalty kill after allowing four power-play goals a night earlier. So we probably shouldn’t have been surprised that Toews was arguably the best player in a Blackhawks uniform in the opener against Colorado and that he followed it up with another strong game against another high-end team in Thursday’s 1-0 loss to the Golden Knights. You’ve got to save your energy for when it matters. Heck, back in their heyday, the entire Blackhawks team barely even cared about mid-January games against Eastern Conference opponents. Even famously competitive and fiery captains. Fifteen-year veterans don’t exactly get too amped up for the preseason. Naturally, there was the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth in Chicago, given Toews’ trade value in the final year of his contract depends entirely on looking at least something like his old self.īut I’ll let you in on a little secret here.
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