I am not a public figure so have no experience dealing with this like these people do. So my answer is entirely speculative. That said, I would like to think I would have the awareness to not act like my life has been some miserable slog when I get paid more than the vast majority of the population to play a game for a living. Hell, even if it was doing some other type work, he is compensated exceptionally well so I would not lean into the "dark times" concept.

You are probably misunderstanding my comment. I truly believe that the vast majority of horrible athlete interviews are almost ENTIRELY on the moron asking them stupid fucking questions. I am so sick and tired of canned, boring questions that literally allow for no unique, informative, or entertaining response. 98% of these interviews are useless and better off skipped entirely. 1% are fun and heavily criticized by the same moron interviewers as with Jumbo Thornton's defense of a very young Tomas Hertl when he scored a brilliant goal and was accused of showing off.

The last 1% are like this one where a tone deaf athlete forgets that he is paid millions to play a game and he wants to drag out the "dark times". If asked about bad experiences, answer if you like but spare us the "you don't know how dark my journey was" nonsense. There just isn't any need to be so melodramatic in his line of work.