Linus Ullmark has had success with the Boston Bruins and is the best goalkeeper in the NHL for the present.
For the first time, he talks about the alcohol problems that Father Jan Olof had before his death.
– I was about to quit and move home, he says to the NHL website.
It was during the last season in Sweden 2014/15 with Modo that Linus Ullmark was the hardest.
During the morning warm-up, he could no longer hold it in, broke down and tears flowed uncontrollably onto the ice.
At his home in Lugenvik, an hour’s drive southwest of Örnsköldsvik, Father Jan Olof’s alcohol abuse escalated.
– I didn’t know what to do. I thought of quitting. I was about to quit smoking and move home. Then I called a psychiatrist who really helped me get through it, work through all my emotions, says Linus Ullmark.
Found vodka bottles
Father Jan Olof always helped him and his older brother Tobias, who was four years his senior, and had plenty of time after a stroke prevented him from continuing to work.
Health problems worsened, and then alcoholism became both the solution and the problem.
Linus Allmark became aware of the problems when he found bottles of vodka around the house and heard the lies told by his father.
Now there was constant worry and pain about his father’s responsibility.
– Especially after you’re gone, you feel guilty, but he was my father, and I’m not his. He will take care of me. I will not take care of him. So I have my own stuff. They have their stuff. I can’t worry about their stuff when I have to worry about my stuff. It was a process, says Linus Ullmark.
“I’m trying to protect myself.”
Memories are hazy, but when he finds things in the house she confronts him.
– I can’t say for sure when it stopped. did he stop? I don’t know. I wasn’t home much. I have two children. Such things I can only speculate about in my head. I try to protect myself and say that he was recovering until his death. This is what I live with. That is what it is, but he was never hostile or anything towards me or any of us as far as I know, says Linus Allmark.
The burden has disappeared
On a warm-up day with the Buffalo Sabers in Philadelphia on January 18, 2021, his mother called to tell him that Jan Olof had passed away at age 63 after diabetes and other health problems.
Strange as it sounds, it was like lifting a weight off my shoulder. I think many people can relate to this feeling of being sick because of different things. You know their end is coming, mainly because they’re old and you can see it in them. I always said he wouldn’t see his 70s, so I prepared a little for that. Nothing prepares you when they are actually dead, says Linus Ullmark.
Linus Ullmark leads the NHL goaltending league with 17 wins in 21 games.
The 29-year-old is a candidate for the Vezina Trophy as the best goaltender in the NHL, and the league-leading Bruins Bruins are one of the favorites to win the Stanley Cup.