NEW YORK (AP) — Jonathan Toews reached another milestone in his NHL comeback on Monday, recording his first point in nearly 2 1/2 years.
“I guess when you put it that way it’s nice to get the monkey off your back,” Toews said after he and the Winnipeg Jets beat the New York Islanders 5-2.
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Winnipeg Jets center Jonathan Toews (19) passes the puck during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Winnipeg Jets center Jonathan Toews (19) skates upice during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Winnipeg Jets center Jonathan Toews (19) controls the puck during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Winnipeg Jets' Jonathan Toews (19) is introduced prior to NHL hockey game action against the Dallas Stars in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP)
Toews helped set up Nino Niederreiter's power-play goal in the Jets' third game of the season and picked up a secondary assist. Toews last got on the scoresheet April 14, 2023, in his final game with Chicago before stepping away from hockey because of health issues.
“Felt like I had a few chances to score, too,” Toews said. "Hopefully find a way to get that first goal here, too. I think ultimately you just concentrate on making plays, getting around the net, being more confident when the puck comes to you in those dangerous areas. It’s a numbers game. Just got to keep creating and find ways to find the back of the net.”
Toews, now 37, chose his hometown team to make his return after missing the past two seasons because of the effects of chronic immune response syndrome and long COVID. He said he's feeling good physically while getting up to speed.
“Still finding my way a little bit," Toews said. “It takes time to become second-nature. And then you have to find your game. You’ve got to go out there and relax a little bit. The first couple games I felt like I was getting tired late in shifts, because you’re just over-skating everything and over-working yourself. You’d rather be safe than sorry, and sometimes less is more.”
Toews captained Chicago to the Stanley Cup three times, in 2010, ‘13 and ’15. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP during the franchise's first championship run since 1961 and in 2016 was chosen as one of the top 100 players in the league's 100-year history.
“He’s worked hard to come back and feel good, and I think that’s the most important thing is he’s feeling good,” longtime Blackhawks teammate and current Detroit Red Wings winger Patrick Kane said last month. “I’m really happy that he’s back.”
Toews also helped Canada win two Olympic gold medals. Those tournaments and world championships are the only times he and Kane have faced off against each other since breaking in together with the Blackhawks in '07.
Assuming they're healthy, that is set to change on Dec. 31 when Winnipeg visits Detroit. Kane already asked coach Todd McLellan to put him out for the opening faceoff against the former teammate with whom he'll forever be linked.
Asked before camp opened if he thought Toews — nicknamed “Captain Serious” for his low-key demeanor — has mellowed over the years, Kane shook his head.
“I don’t think so,” Kane said. “I’m sure he’s pissed off about something. Someone said something about him, or he’s always got to prove someone wrong. That’s a great thing about Johnny. He’s always out to prove something.”
Toews is proving he still has it, averaging over 17 minutes of ice time as the Jets' second-line center. Coach Scott Arniel used Toews on the penalty kill against the Islanders after forward Cole Koepke got injured blocking a shot, but the staff is trying not to overplay him.
“He’s getting better every day," Arniel said. "That’s what we talked about, him and I, that it wasn’t going to come in one fell swoop. Every day, he’s gotten better and better and I think he’s recognizing just how to kind of play the game with his hockey smarts.
“He does veteran things. He does elite things, whether it’s using his body or his stick or his positioning and you’re just seeing him getting more and more comfortable: getting comfortable with our team and how we play but also his linemates and different people, as well.”
The next task is a long shot bid to make Canada's Olympic team one more time in NHL players' return to the Games in Milan in February. He'd also like to help the Jets win the Cup for the first time, and his teammates love having Toews around.
“It’s the leadership he has, the things he’s done in this league, and there’s nothing that he hasn’t done,” Tanner Pearson said. “It goes a long way. (He) helps us along. He’s very vocal in the room, says the right things.”
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Winnipeg Jets center Jonathan Toews (19) passes the puck during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Winnipeg Jets center Jonathan Toews (19) skates upice during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Winnipeg Jets center Jonathan Toews (19) controls the puck during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Elmont, N.Y. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
Winnipeg Jets' Jonathan Toews (19) is introduced prior to NHL hockey game action against the Dallas Stars in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP)
SYDNEY (AP) — As the sounds of bullets rang out and the bodies fell, the young mother threw herself on top of her 5-year-old son and prayed.
“Please don’t let us die,” 33-year-old Rebecca begged God from her hiding place under a table in a park overlooking Bondi, Australia’s most iconic beach. Rebecca spoke on condition that her last name not be used for fear of retaliation. “Please just keep my son safe.”
It was faith that drew Rebecca and hundreds of other members of Sydney’s Jewish community to this picturesque spot to celebrate the start of Hannukah. And it was faith that authorities said made her and others attending the Channukah by the Sea gathering a target of two gunmen who began firing at revelers around 6:40 p.m. on Sunday. Authorities have called it an antisemitic act of terrorism.
In the minutes that followed, the assault would take the lives of at least 15 people, officials said, including a 10-year-old girl, a Holocaust survivor and a beloved rabbi. It would also take away a sense of security in a country that, because of strict gun laws, has largely been insulated from the mass shootings so common in the United States and other Western nations.
This reconstruction is based on interviews with survivors and footage of the assault.
Under the table that held food for the partygoers, Rebecca pulled buckets of drinks on top of her body, to try and hide herself and her son. Suddenly, a man lying on his side just 10 centimeters (3 inches) from her was struck in the chest by a bullet.
“I’m dying,” he told Rebecca. “I can’t breathe.”
Under fire and separated from her husband and 7-year-old daughter, Rebecca could offer him nothing but words. “You’re going to be OK,” she told him desperately. “You’re going to be OK.”
She did not know if that was true.
It started out as a classic Sunday summer evening in Sydney. The sun had not yet set, and the temperature was still a balmy 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit). The Tasman Sea was speckled with swimmers and surfers.
In the park overlooking Bondi’s golden arc of sand, children giggled and cuddled animals at a petting zoo set up as part of the Hanukkah celebration. Rebecca’s son scampered up a rock-climbing wall. Music competed with the sound of crashing waves.
And then the bubbles floating through the air were replaced with bullets, the laughter replaced with screams. From their positions on one of the pedestrian bridges connecting the busy main road to the beach, two armed gunmen — a father and son, according to police — had begun firing into the crowd.
Young people began to run, but older people struggled to get up. From her perch on a bench, Rebecca watched in horror as a bullet struck an older woman sitting next to her. Rebecca grabbed her son and dove under the table.
On the beach and the boardwalk, it was bedlam.
Some surfers and swimmers frantically paddled ashore, while others sought safety in the sea. Eleanor, who also spoke on condition that her last name not be used for fear of retaliation, said she been walking down the boardwalk on her way to dinner when she heard the gunshots. Her mind went blank, apart from one command: “Run.” And so she did, fully clothed, into the ocean.
Crowds of people — gathered on a grassy slope overlooking the sea for a sunset viewing of the Christmas romcom, “The Holiday” — abandoned their blankets and beach chairs and fled.
From their hotel room overlooking the streets of Bondi, Joel Sargent, 30, and his partner, Grace, from Melbourne, heard the shots and began to film. Their footage, obtained by The Associated Press, shows that the gunfire went on for at least seven minutes, with dozens of blasts. Grace spoke on condition her last name not be used because she didn't want people at work to know she had been involved.
"Baby, I’m scared," Grace can be heard saying as they watched throngs of screaming people stream past their building. She shouted down to them: “Get off the street!”
Phones across the city lit up with panicked calls and messages. Lawrence Stand was at home when his phone rang. It was his 12-year-old daughter, who had been attending a bar mitzvah inside the Bondi Pavilion, overlooking the beach.
Stand told his daughter to stay on the phone as he leaped into his car and raced toward the beach. He found her and pulled her and others into his car, speeding them away from the carnage.
Many did not know where to find sanctuary. Inside a Greek restaurant, 20-year-old American friends Shira Elisha and Lexi Haag first hid in the restaurant’s bathroom, and then ran back to Elisha’s home, where they hid under her bedding. The pair wondered how a situation so common to the U.S. but so alien to Australia was happening here.
Back in the park, the man next to Rebecca was bleeding out. Rebecca’s 65-year-old mother-in-law grabbed a piece of discarded cardboard and pressed it against his wound.
The man did not survive.
The shots kept coming. Sirens wailed. Minutes passed. A bystander can be heard shouting in one video: “Where are the cops?”
That and other widely circulated videos of the attack chronicled what happened next.
Near one of the shooters, a passerby identified by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke as Ahmed al Ahmed crouched behind a parked car. Ahmed, a fruit shop owner and father of two, then rushed the shooter and wrestled away the gun, before pointing the weapon at the shooter, who fell to the ground. Ahmed was shot in the shoulder by the other gunman, but survived.
The man disarmed by Ahmed got up but, under fire from police, soon fell again. The other shooter traded fire with police for another minute before he, too, fell.
Police later confirmed the older of the two suspected gunmen, a 50-year-old, was fatally shot. His 24-year-old son, who was shot and wounded, is being treated at a hospital.
Back in the park, rescuers frantically pumped the chests of unmoving bodies on the grass, near a picnic table, an abandoned stroller and the petting zoo.
On Monday, Elisha, the American who hid in the restaurant bathroom, wandered down to the beach, where rows of shoes abandoned by fleeing beachgoers lined the sand.
“It just reminded me of the Holocaust — all these shoes lying here. This is like Oct. 7,” she said, referring to Hamas-led militants’ 2023 attack in Israel. “How many times do Jews need to be attacked before the world just wakes up and realizes that we have targets on our backs?”
After a sleepless night, Rebecca and her sister-in-law, draped in the flag of Israel, made their way to the beach to mourn before a memorial of flowers.
Rebecca’s children have asked her many questions since the attack, for which she has no answers, she said.
She has her own questions: for officials she said did little to address a surge in antisemitic crimes in Sydney and Melbourne over the past year.
“The world needs to wake up and see what’s happening,” she said. “They specifically targeted us, the Jewish people. ... No one did anything. They turned a blind eye.”
Police cordon off an area at Bondi Beach after a reported shooting in Sydney, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
People offer hugs to each other at a flower memorial placed outside Bondi Pavilion at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
A woman places an Israeli flag over flowers outside Bondi Pavilion at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
A couple embrace a day after a shooting at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
Shoes sit lined up following a shooting the day prior at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
