- Marner says he has been focused on his mental health “for the last five years or so”
- The Golden Knights star credited family and his old Toronto teammates for getting him through
- Read below for Marner’s full comments and the support system behind his Cup Final run
Mitch Marner spent nine years as the easiest target in Toronto. On Tuesday he showed how much of that he had been carrying.
Asked at the Golden Knights’ end-of-season media availability about the “dark times” he referenced during Vegas’s run to the Cup Final, Marner went further than he had before.
“I think mental health is a super important thing to me. It really is,” Marner said. “I’ve been really trying to take care of my mental health, probably for the last five years or so.”
Here’s Marner’s interview with Sportsnet after Vegas punched its Cup Final ticket, where the “dark times” line first came out:
Marner credited the people who pulled him through it.
“I’m really thankful that I had some unbelievable teammates around me in Toronto that I was able to talk to, express myself,” he said, before naming his brother, his parents and his wife.
He also described pulling back from social media and the criticism that lived there.
“I tried to check myself out of that in the last two or three years, really just tried to get off of it, tried to get away from it,” Marner said. He called it something “a lot of us are addicted to” and a problem he thinks still gets overlooked.
The original comment came right after Vegas swept Colorado in the Western Conference Final, when Marner admitted there had been some dark times in hockey for himself.
Criticism in Toronto always circled back to his playoff production. Marner answered it in Vegas, leading all playoff skaters in scoring this spring with 29 points in 22 games during the first year of his eight-year deal.
Take a look at the NHL’s recent feature on Marner’s new life with the Golden Knights:
For a player who spent years getting picked apart in Toronto, Marner sounded settled in a way that city never let him be.
