Blackhawks’ Toews opens up about health

Blackhawks center Jonathan Toews opened up about a previously unspecified health condition that forced him to miss the entire season and revealed the condition that had been ailing him.

“I think there’s just a lot of things that piled up where my body just fell apart,” he said in a video interview that he posted Wednesday to his verified Twitter account. “What they’re calling it is chronic immune response syndrome, where I just couldn’t quite recover and my immune system was just reacting to everything, any kind of stress, anything that I would do throughout the day, it was always that kind of stress response. So it just took some time. That was the really frustrating part, not knowing when or how I was going to get over the hump.”

Toews, 33, the Chicago captain and a three-time Stanley Cup champ, had announced in December he was dealing with an unspecified medical issue that left him feeling “drained and lethargic.”

Then, in January, Chicago placed Toews on long-term injured reserve.

Since the announcement, Toews had not been seen at the team facility and hadn’t issued any public comments about his condition.

“I learned a lot about the stress I’ve put on my body over the years and I appreciate the support,” Toews continued. “A lot of people were worried, and I definitely felt bad to a certain degree that people were that worried and thought it was really serious, but in the back of my mind, I knew my getting through it was just a matter of time.”

Toews also said he “wasn’t too vocal about the things I went through this year” and expressed his gratitude to the fans, organization and teammates.