Vegas Golden Knights forward Mitch Marner used a portion of his end-of-season media availability Tuesday to expand on the highly publicized "dark times" comment he made after advancing to the Stanley Cup Final in May.
"There was some really dark moments that the thought of playing hockey was really tough, honestly, in a lot of ways," Marner said, per Danny Webster of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "Was just a dark kind of vibe, dark hole in a way. I'm very thankful, like I said, that I had people around me - teammates - that asked me how I was doing and knew that I was going through something that I could talk to."
Marner said the difficulties he endured earlier in his career made winning the Western Conference Final even sweeter. But despite being asked about the remark at media day ahead of the Stanley Cup Final, he held off on elaborating until the series concluded.
"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, and I'm really thankful that I had some unbelievable teammates around me in Toronto that I was able to talk to, express myself."
Marner spent the first nine seasons of his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs and faced loads of scrutiny for the club's failure to go on a significant playoff run despite qualifying each year.
The 29-year-old signed an eight-year deal with the Golden Knights last summer. He then shut down the narrative that he couldn't perform in the playoffs by leading all players with 29 points in 22 postseason games as Vegas fell two wins shy of the Stanley Cup.
Marner's 10 playoff goals this spring, highlighted by a pair of hat tricks, are only three shy of the 13 he scored over 70 playoff games with the Maple Leafs.
