Islanders goalie opens up about inner battles: Almost killed myself

Robin Lehner had to drink a case of beer a day to ease his mind. He needed pills to go to sleep. The goaltender assumed it was part of his addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Instead, those were just a way for him to self-medicate. The new Islanders goalie was suffering from a mental disorder. After checking into a rehab center, he was diagnosed as bipolar 1 with manic phases, Lehner revealed in a heartfelt first-person account in The Athletic.

“Now all this is not the sole reason for bad decisions I have made in life, but they were definitely affecting my mental state in ways that I did not realize,” he wrote. “During the treatment I went through stages of grief, anger, sadness and hopelessness. I was broken and they were trying to put me together. My mind had been tricked into thinking that the terrible things that had happened to me were somehow OK. I didn’t try to change it. It was what I was used to.”

He would have suicidal thoughts and had been taking sleeping pills for seven years. It came to a head on March 29 of this year, his final game with the Sabres.

“The second period began and everything started to get worse,” the 27-year-old Lehner wrote. “That pain in my chest now felt more like pressure. Towards the end of the period, things started to get blurry and I couldn’t focus. I felt very fuzzy, but I battled like I always did. The scoreboard clock was ticking down so slowly. I just wanted to get back to the locker room. When zero finally hit, I walked back and sat in in the trainer’s room. I could barely get my gear off. I broke down. I was having a major, full-blown panic attack. I thought I was suffering a heart attack. I had no idea what was happening. I could not go back on the ice.”

He left following the second period and wasn’t seen around the dressing room the rest of the season, according to The Buffalo News. The team described his absence then as a lower-body injury. It was then that he entered the league’s substance-abuse program.

“In the airport ready to fly, I sat by myself with a hoodie over my head drinking beers,” Lehner wrote. “At that point I thought I had only two options. Get on that plane and do this or end this once and for all now. I got on the plane.”

He had few takers in free agency, except for the goalie-needy Islanders.

“The Islanders were ready to take a chance with me. I was relieved that I could start a new chapter,” Lehner wrote. “When I was finally offered the deal, I was so happy. I finally had someone who believed in me, now sober.

“The one thing that was still making me nervous was that bipolar stigma. I didn’t understand why I was so ashamed to say anything. Would I lose my job? I finally was able to gather enough courage to talk about this with management. To my surprise, they were very accepting, knowing that I would still need more help at certain times. With my last GM checking in on me, my new one working with me, I am finally beginning to find a place of comfort without having to find something to make everything go away. I am truly ready to battle now.”

He’s speaking out now to hope his story helps others, Lehner told reporters on Thursday, the first day of Islanders training camp.