Anxiety was never in Jack Campbell’s vocabulary.

What he chalked up to nerves was so much more. And on top of a lifelong battle with depression, the former NHL goaltender turned to alcohol during his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs, he shared during an appearance on the Cam and Strick podcast this week.

It was something that then-general manager Kyle Dubas was aware of, and part of why the team he felt so comfortable with didn’t want to re-sign him.

“I would have given everything to stay in Toronto. I loved it,” said Campbell, who entered the NHL as the 11th overall selection in the 2011 draft by the Dallas Stars. “They didn’t offer the deal I felt I deserved.

“However, looking back and being real about it - I’ll put it this way. I’d say Kyle cares a lot about the people behind just how they’re performing on the ice, which is really incredible as a general manager because they have as much stress as anybody to perform, but he actually cares.

“(He) saw me struggling off the ice, especially with the booze, tried to help me, and I just wasn’t ready. Looking back, it was totally clear why they probably wouldn’t sign me to that same deal.”

Campbell would go on to say that most of his drinking came in settings with his teammates, and he felt like he was able to “get away with it” because he had been performing, for the most part, at a high level.

“I just was on a different level,” he said. “Things would just escalate a little bit quicker for me.”

While the Leafs wouldn’t give Campbell the deal he felt he deserved, the Edmonton Oilers did. In fact, in the lead-up to free agency, word already started to leak that Edmonton was considered one of the leading suitors for the netminder.

And when free agency opened, the deal was done.

“They believed in me, they signed me to that deal,” said Campbell when asked if he thought about going to the Oilers for help. “So it was never like, ‘Oh, why aren’t they trying to help me?’ It was like, ‘How can I get to the level I know I can play at for them?’

“So I never even thought of it that way. I’m grateful for Edmonton a lot… It sucks that it went the way it did, and I know what I’m capable of doing on the ice. However, it just wasn’t going to happen with the way I was living.”

It was the highs and lows of being a goaltender, Campbell said, that affected him the most.

“My whole career was just a matter of when I felt good, I played good, and when I decided not to feel good, I didn’t play good,” he said. “It sucks to like look back on my career and be like, ‘man, I, I did that to myself,’ getting drafted where I did and then just crumbling under my own pressure.”

It got to him in Edmonton. The Oilers, coming off a season where they ran Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen for the bulk of the games, were in need of someone who could tend the crease for a number of years with the 39-year-old Smith retiring.

Campbell’s first start in Edmonton was stellar, posting a .917 save percentage, turning aside 33 of 36 shots in a 5-3 win over the Calgary Flames. But it didn’t take long for the wheels to fall off. By the time 2022 turned to 2023, he had an 8-7-1 record and a .876 save percentage - numbers he was never able to improve on.

And when the playoffs started, the Oilers turned to Stuart Skinner, but the team would get bounced in the second round by the Vegas Golden Knights. Many hoped Campbell would enter the 2023-24 season rejuvenated, but such wasn’t the case. After just five starts, a 1-4 record, along with a 4.50 goals-against average and an .873 save percentage, Campbell landed on waivers, playing out the year for the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors.

“It felt like my life was over,” said Campbell, adding he was sober at the time. “My only identity was being a hockey player. I knew for like a decade I needed to go get help, but I never saw the right time to go get help, so it just didn’t make any sense.

“My life revolved around how I performed on the ice and getting sent down… that was just a very difficult time in my life.”

It would take Campbell time to find his game again, but after a month and a half, he said he felt like he was able to turn his game on. And boy, did he, posting an 18-13-1 record, a .918 save percentage and a 2.63 goals-against average with the Condors.

That summer, Campbell’s contract would be bought out by the Oilers, and he would sign with the Detroit Red Wings. But before he would ever play, he entered the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program to get the help he knew he needed.

“It’s not a great feeling, I’ll tell you that,” he said of entering the program. “I called my agent, he handled it - thank God.

“They were super supportive. I was going through that down kind of the last hurrah for me in the minors. I just knew it was now or never to help myself, and it just made sense.”

He would play 14 games for the Red Wings’ AHL affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins, retiring after the 2024-25 season.

Now, Campbell said, he’s found a second career as a performance coach,

“In Edmonton, during my struggles, I found through some of my teammates a firm that does executive life coaching, and so I hired a coach for the first time near the playoffs that first year,” he said. “I ended up going in a few times feeling good.

“I knew right away from stepping away from the game into this new career that thrills me. So that’s kind of a gift I was given, knowing what I wanted to do after hockey, which is not what I thought was going to happen when I was a kid.”

You can listen to Campbell’s full appearance on the Cam and Strick podcast below.

Zach Laing is the managing editor at Daily Faceoff Edmonton and news director at The Nation Network. He can be followed on X at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.

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