Inside the mental health challenge slumping NHLers face: ‘You can't get away from it'

New York Times

29-05-2025

Cody Glass was alone in his Las Vegas apartment, unable to walk because of a torn ACL.
Glass' rookie NHL season wasn't supposed to end like this. Everything until that point suggested that the speedy, talented playmaking center was on an accelerated path to stardom. He was drafted No. 6 by the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017. He lit up the WHL. He turned pro late in 2018-19 and quickly became one of the top players on a Chicago Wolves team that reached the Calder Cup finals. He scored six points in his first nine NHL games as he centered stars Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty.
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'I was living on a high this whole time,' Glass reflected.
However, one by one, life dealt him setbacks that shattered the dream-like start to his career.
As Vegas got healthier, he was demoted down the lineup. He was sometimes moved to the wing, a position he'd rarely played before. Glass' point production cratered to just six points in his final 30 games. He got hurt and underwent season-ending knee surgery in early March, around the same time that the world was shutting down due to COVID-19 in 2020.
Glass couldn't walk for several weeks. Even basic tasks were a struggle. Trips crutching up and down the stairs of his apartment to retrieve groceries were a nightmare. His father, Jeff, visited him during the first week after the surgery but had to rush back to Winnipeg as airports were on the verge of shutting down.
All at once, Glass was dealing with the first major slump of his pro career while carrying the weight of being the Golden Knights' first draft pick in franchise history, a crippling knee injury, and isolation from his family and girlfriend.
For months, his only face-to-face human contact was with the team trainer, who helped rehab his knee as he wrestled with all this new adversity.
'Mentally, I was in a pretty dark place,' Glass said. 'I've talked through it with multiple psychologists and all this kind of stuff to get me back to…' — he paused, searching for the right word — 'normal, I would say.'
The injury and isolation-related challenges eventually went away, but on the ice, things weren't getting any easier.
Glass bounced between the NHL and AHL in 2020-21, managing just 10 points in 27 big-league games. The three players taken directly ahead of him in the 2017 draft — Miro Heiskanen, Cale Makar and Elias Pettersson — all became instant stars, which made the burden Glass put on himself to perform heavier.
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'In my head I was (thinking), 'Do I even want to play hockey anymore?'' Glass said. 'That was my biggest issue, it just wasn't fun anymore … and that's something that I hated. I hated (that) deeply just because I loved it for so long and it was really picking and choosing if I really wanted to keep playing just because of my mental space.
'It (hockey) has given me the best times of my life, and it's also given me maybe the worst times of my life.'
In the NHL, on-ice struggles carry enormous stakes. A bad stretch at the wrong time can cost a player his reputation, job, and millions of dollars. Fans and media don't waste a second turning against an underperforming player. It makes for an exceptionally difficult mental challenge. Here's a window into the burden players experience during a slump, and some of the strategies they're learning to cope with it.
One or two bad games aren't usually enough to throw a player off mentally. But when a run of subpar games extends to a couple of weeks or a couple of months, the mix of pressure, nervousness and frustration takes players out of the confident flow state where correct plays and on-ice decisions come instinctually.
'I remember when I felt my worst about it, it felt like the arena is just closing in on you,' said Frank Corrado, a former NHL defenseman and current TSN analyst. 'It felt like (the fans) were on your shoulder, just kinda hovering over you. You felt like you were small.'
The NHL is a ruthless, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business. Non-star players are more interchangeable than ever before. Tomorrow is never promised, so it's easy for worst-case-scenario fears to creep into a player's mind, adding to the mental toll. A player's specific worry could be about their role, ice-time, the effect a down year could have on their next contract, or getting traded or sent down to the minors, which might mean relocating to a new city.
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'My thought (during a slump) was, 'Well, that's it, I'm gone and somebody else who's doing well in the minors or somewhere different is coming to take my position,'' Corrado said. 'That's very insecure … but there probably is a certain percentage of players that think that way.'
If a player's self-esteem is tied to their on-ice performance, it can further add to the mental distress. And there isn't much of an opportunity to disconnect from the pressure that comes with a rough patch because the NHL season is a meat grinder with nonstop games, practices, travel, meetings, recovery and gym sessions.
'It consumes your entire life,' said Dallas Stars defenseman Thomas Harley. 'I don't know how true it is for other guys, but I'm never not thinking about hockey.
'When you're not playing well, you're struggling and you can't get away from it, it's not great.'
It isn't always easy to open up when a tough stretch of play weighs on you mentally. Some players are especially reluctant to openly discuss the challenges and issues they're facing within their team.
'If you think about it from a player's standpoint, to speak in-house about their struggles, where does that put a coach's mindset usually?' said Dr. Alicia Naser, a board-certified behavior analyst who works with several NHL players. '(A coach might think) 'Is he consistent? Is he reliable? Can I put him in?'
'By speaking up and talking about struggles, I'm not saying that coaches aren't supportive or accepting of it, they very much are, but we have to remember that coaches also want job security, they also need to win games. If they feel as though perhaps putting a player in may not be the best move if he's expressing that he's struggling, then they may not put him in or he loses ice time or he gets a different contract.'
Naser said that even among teammates, where you'd expect players to have closer bonds, those conversations aren't happening often. When Corrado underperformed, for example, he could confide in one or two of his closest friends on the team, but he didn't feel comfortable being vulnerable with the group beyond that. Naser has heard similar stories from her clients.
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'It's not often that you find a player will share with their teammates that they're struggling,' she said. 'Again, same reason, not wanting to lose ice-time or it coming back to decision-makers when it comes to lineup changes.'
NHL teams are investing heavily in resources to help players with the mental side of the game. Increasingly, however, players like Glass are reaping rewards from turning to outside help so they can fully let their guards down.
'I think a lot of players and men in general (used to) kinda look away from that (seeking the help of a professional) because we're supposed to be tough guys and not talk to people and that kind of stereotype,' Glass said. 'I feel like that's big in our game now, just talking to someone and getting it off your chest… I feel like that lifted so much baggage off me, made me feel a lot better on the inside and just put me in a better mood at all times.'
Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch told NHL.com earlier this season that 'half — if not more — of our players probably have their own personal psychologist,' which is one example of this growing trend.
One of the most common problems Naser sees from players during a slump is them replaying a mistake over and over, which amplifies self-inflicted pressure and anxiety. She said these lingering negative thoughts are a big reason some players have difficulty falling asleep during a downturn.
How can players overcome this? Naser has a multi-step strategy. Players are first instructed to set a timer on their phone for 10 minutes and to let their brain run wild with whatever negative thoughts and emotions they're feeling. Naser describes this as going to the penalty box in a proverbial sense and depositing those thoughts there, which she says is important because if you try to resist them completely, they only become harder to fight off. Once the 10-minute timer goes off, players make an active choice to leave those thoughts inside the penalty box, so to speak, and move on to trying to fall asleep again.
Corrado said many of the best players he played with were able to, 'Think about (a bad performance) for 50 minutes after the game and then completely let it go.' Ironically, this is where some players who weren't as obsessed with hockey had an advantage.
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'You can call it the 'give a s— meter,'' Corrado said. 'Some guys didn't have the super high give a s— meter, it almost worked in their favor because you're like 'That guy, he's not getting caught up in it' and it kinda works for him in that way and he's able to let it go because he just doesn't know any better.'
Most players, however, aren't wired this way. This is where changing the way one frames mistakes in one's head can be enormously helpful.
'The first thing we do is go, 'OK, how does any high performer view mistakes?'' Naser said. 'We view it as a bad thing… why don't we change our perception of mistakes so it's not so much a bad thing but another circumstance that happens on the ice?
'Then we go from fighting and resisting mistakes to accepting it. And when you accept it, it's less of a barrier and it gives more power back to the player because a lot of times with negative thoughts, players feel like it takes all the power away from them.'
When a player no longer views mistakes as an overwhelmingly bad, crippling thing — Naser is able to get players to buy into this theory by explaining that occasional mistakes are inevitable in a hockey game — it's easier to move on. When players commit one turnover, they can still go out on the next shift and keep playing their natural game instead of playing more tentatively out of fear of making another blunder.
'The fear of (making a mistake) is almost just as bad as it itself,' Corrado said. 'Once you lose that fear, that's when you can really start to see some change in how you operate under those circumstances.'
Pressure is another common issue that players face. It's another emotion that's easier to cope with once you've reframed it in your head.
'How we frame it is, 'If you're feeling pressure, that must mean you care and it's a really great thing as an NHL player to care. I would be concerned if you didn't care,'' Naser said. 'We reframe pressure as a good thing because it means you care and the absence of pressure would be more concerning than the feeling of it.'
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Reframing concepts like mistakes and pressure isn't going to completely rid all the negative thoughts and stress associated with a weeks-long rough patch. However, these reframes help make those low points less crippling and more manageable, so they won't drastically hinder their future performance and overall mental health.
Finding tools and strategies that work during hard times is essential because outsiders will never truly understand what NHL players are going through when they underperform on the biggest stage, where the consequences are career and life-altering.
'There's a lot (that) fans and media don't understand,' said Boston Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov. 'But it's hard to explain because I feel like you have to go through the life we had to actually understand what (it takes) to be a professional hockey player.
'You guys probably see 10 percent of the stuff going on behind closed doors. We could sit here for three hours, I could tell you everything and that's the first time you'll be hearing (what we're going through).'
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Elsa / Getty Images)