B.C. junior hockey team hiring position to focus on players’ mental health

In a big change for hockey culture, a B.C. junior team is putting players’ emotional and mental well-being front and centre.

The B.C. Hockey League’s Coquitlam Express is hiring a director of team assistance who will look after the players’ mental health.

General manager Tali Campbell told Global News the need for such a role among the team’s staff became apparent during last season when players’ schedules, routines and expectations were turned upside down by COVID-19.

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Campbell said his team of 16 20-year-olds is one of the first in junior hockey in Canada to hire someone in this position.

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“We all struggle,” he said. “We all have the same problems and those are the barriers we are breaking down to say, ‘You know what? it’s okay not to be okay.'”

“For too long our entire focus in hockey is, ‘Let’s get these guys on the ice, let’s make sure they can battle through anything,'” he said.

“And society perceives hockey players in general as these big, mean, tough guys and they can take it and they can give it and they can block shots. But at the end of the day, at this level especially, they are just kids. They’ve got a lot going on.”

Campbell added the pandemic has opened a pandora’s box of emotions and feelings and said it’s a “new generation of athletes” who have emerged.