Jonathan Toews indirectly addressed the ongoing Patrick Kane situation on a Winnipeg radio station on Thursday, saying, “You stay together as a team.”
Toews was asked how, as captain, he deals with off-ice concerns such as the police investigation involving Kane and a woman in Hamburg, N.Y., though the radio host on TSN-1290 only referred to Kane as “one of your star teammates.” Toews said the Blackhawks can draw on recent experience.
“I think you’ve just got to have confidence that things like that will resolve themselves over time,” Toews told the Hustler and Lawless show. “And for the time being, you stay together as a team, you support your teammate [or] teammates that are maybe going through a rough patch. We saw it last year with some rumors that spread around social media about several guys in our locker room. It’s not the first time we’ve seen situations like that.”
Last season, Patrick Sharp was at the epicenter of sordid rumors about his social life, which he vehemently denied.
“Eventually you just deal with it internally, you stay together as a team, and you’re confident that as individuals and as a group, everyone kind of stays together,” Toews said during the segment. “And at the end of the day we always say to each other what is said and what is done within the locker room is the only thing that really matters. We don’t let anything going on on the outside affect the way we do our job and the way we come to work together as a team.
Hawks training camp opens on Sept. 18. Kane has not been charged with a crime, but his status for camp is uncertain.
“I get a lot of credit cause I have a ‘C’ on my sweater, but I think we’ve got a great group of guys that understand what it takes to be a leader, what it takes to be a part of a good team,” Toews said. “Clearly, that’s more than just what happens on the ice. There’s always a lot of things being said and things going on off the ice. But no matter what, We do a good job of sticking together.”
