{"id":605385,"date":"2026-08-26T17:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T17:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/605385\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T17:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T17:56:08","slug":"lightnings-victor-hedman-discusses-mental-health-it-is-ok-not-to-be-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/605385\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning’s Victor Hedman discusses mental health: ‘It is OK not to be OK’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victor Hedman<\/a> took a personal leave late last season to focus on his mental health.<\/p>\n

Now, the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> star defenceman is speaking up about some of the strides he’s made.<\/p>\n

In an interview with NHL.com<\/a>‘s Dan Rosen, Hedman said he has been working regularly with his longtime therapist and is feeling “super motivated” heading into the season. <\/p>\n

“A lot of great support,” Hedman, 35, said. “I was super flattered by that.”<\/p>\n

Hedman’s last game was on March 19, when he played just 4:44 against the Vancouver Canucks. He dealt with injuries earlier in the season, including one that kept him out of Sweden’s Olympic quarterfinal loss against the U.S.<\/p>\n

Hedman finished the season playing just 33 games.<\/p>\n

“For me, it was not really feeling low, but it was performance anxiety, kind of feeling that pressure in your chest as soon as a game day would hit,” Hedman said. “It kind of locks you up. You make a mistake and in the past you’d be able to shake it off, but I couldn’t do that. And I wasn’t feeling 100 per cent physically.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hedman did skate during the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and said he likely would have returned if the Lightning had beaten the Montreal Canadiens.<\/p>\n

Looking back, he is confident he made the right decision by stepping away.<\/p>\n

“I felt it was important for me to do to get a handle on everything mentally and physically,” Hedman said. “Someone told me that for good leaders, sometimes doing the right thing for the team is to kind of step away. I thought that was the right decision for me. I wasn’t myself on the ice. I felt I wasn’t helping the team. So, I felt the best thing for the team was for me to focus on myself away. I don’t regret that decision at all. It was the right thing to do.”<\/p>\n

The former Norris Trophy and Conn Smythe Trophy winner is also happy he can talk about his challenges.<\/p>\n

“The stigma, I think it’s getting a lot better, but it’s still probably there,” he said. “At the same time, people go through this, and it’s a lot more people than you think. It’s good to be able to put it out there that it is OK not to be OK.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Hedman took a personal leave late last season to focus on his mental health. Now, the Tampa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":["post-605385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}