Lightning's Victor Hedman Motivated, Refreshed After Mental Health Leave
Victor Hedman appears refreshed and ready to battle it out for the Tampa Bay Lightning, after stepping away from the game last season. Hedman admitted he suffers from performance anxiety and needed to reset his mental health.
“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 gameday would hit…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 percent physically.”
Hedman caught up with NHL.com's Dan Rosen recently, and opened up about his battles, on and off the ice. “For me, it’s just feeling healthy and feeling like my body is where I want it to be,” Hedman said. “You’re on the ice every day, you’re in the gym and you feel good, and that makes, obviously, the mental part easier too when you feel you can perform in your job to the fullest extent. I’m sure it’s going to take me a few games to get back into the rhythm of playing in the League since I haven’t played in a long time, but I’m super fresh, hungry and super motivated to go out there and play my best hockey.”
Hedman took a leave of absence in late March, citing pressure to perform would feel like a brick on his chest on game days, and it became too much to handle. He was tied up on his mistakes game in and game out, and the pressure was overwhelming.
Hedman appeared in 33 games last season, scoring just one goal and adding 17 assists.
I felt it was important for me to do to get a handle on everything mentally and physically. 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.