Rangers Captain Jacob Trouba Accused Of Trivializing Mental Health With Strange Response To Podcast Critic

There was plenty of blame to go around after the Rangers were eliminated from the Stanely Cup Playoffs at the hands of the Panthers, and New York defenseman Jacob Trouba emerged as one of the primary scapegoats. It’s not an enviable position to be in, and now, he’s attracted even more scrutiny after playing the mental health card in response to some incredibly valid criticism.

It was easy to argue the New York Rangers were the team to beat in the Eastern Conference based on how this year’s Presidents’ Trophy winner looked heading into the postseason.

They swept the Capitals in the first round before dispatching the Hurricanes in six games, and while they had a 2-1 lead in their series against the Panthers, they were sent home for the season after losing three games in a row.

Florida deserves plenty of credit for simply outplaying a Rangers squad that saw its biggest names fail to produce when it mattered most, and while Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, and Artemi Panarin caught plenty of heat, it paled in comparison to the amount of flak Jacob Trouba received for his performance.

Trouba (who recently acknowledged he was still dealing with the lingering effects of a broken ankle that sidelined him for the majority of March) was thoroughly exposed by the Panthers forecheck, and he cemented his reputation as a dirty player when he elbowed Evan Rodrigues in Game 3 (he only served a minor penalty—one of the three he managed to rack up in the contest—but was hit with a $5,000 fine as a result).

After the series wrapped up, Spittin’ Chiclets producer Pasha Eshghi joined Matt Murley and Colby Armstrong on Game Notes and made his thoughts on Trouba very clear, saying the d-man doesn’t deserve the captaincy due to how he played.

He also questioned the NHL’s decision to give Trouba the Mark Messier NHL Leadership Award this season while highlighting the irony of a notorious headhunter being married to a neuroscientist who studies the kind of brain trauma he’s known for inflicting on a concerningly regular basis.

It was a pretty scathing takedown, but it was also a pretty reasonable assessment of Trouba’s postseason. Some people tried to argue that Eshghi crossed the line by bringing his wife into the conversation, but I think it was a fairly relevant topic to touch on considering the context of the criticism.

However, Trouba apparently didn’t see things that way, as he hopped on Twitter on Wednesday to invoke the rise in suicide rates among college athletes as well as the passing of PGA Tour player Grayson Murray before saying “We must do better than this.”

It was a fairly baffling response that garnered a flood of replies from people who couldn’t rationalize Trouba’s decision to make the matter about mental health, as the clip he took exception to was void of the kind of incendiary vitriol that would seemingly warrant the defenseman’s reaction.

I don’t envy the amount of negative attention Trouba is currently dealing with. However, he’s also an 11-year NHL veteran who got paid $6 million to serve as the captain of a team in one of America’s most notoriously critical media markets, and dealing with stuff like this comes with the territory.

It’s been great to see more and more professional athletes go out of their way to promote conversations about the importance of mental health, but at the same time, attempting to shoehorn the issue into situations where it seemingly has no relevance only serves to undermine the progress that’s been made.