Towards the end of the first episode of Brooks Laich’s new podcast, How Men Think, the former Caps player admits he felt “bitterness and resentment” towards hockey after his career ended.

Laich is candid about regret over his NHL career and the loss of purpose he felt after it was over. Also in the podcast, he discusses body odor, in-vitro fertilization, and pornography.

The episode was split into five segments. The first addressed a father discovering pornography on his 13-year-old son’s smartphone. The second was about the stigma around IVF and the requirements on men during the process. Later, a woman involved with the show expressed her dismay over men weaponizing the term “crazy” to describe women. A product-placement segment followed with a discussion of men’s hygiene, and the episode ended with a roundtable of what motivates each of the hosts.

It was that final segment in which Laich admitted regrets about his career:

I played 15 years of professional hockey. What I realized when I got out of it is how suppressive it is on other areas of your life. You’re so micro-focused on winning a Stanley Cup, your whole life revolves around it: how you eat, sleep, train, your relationship. Everything revolves around you winning, and that suppressed a lot of other thing in your life. Other things you want to do, other projects of service, being able to travel, time with family.

And how he felt after it ended:

The one thing I’d be desperate to change would be some bitterness and resentment towards my sport for being done sooner than I figured I would be. Some relationships in the sport, some things that happened to me, with me, with some people that made decisions involving my career [. . .] Thirty-five years of my life was dedicated to professional hockey — to winning a Stanley Cup, so when I got the phone call that you’re released and your career is over, there’s a tremendous loss of purpose. You don’t just go from doing the thing you love most in the world to doing something that’s okay.

Earlier in the episode, Laich says he uses deodorant just a few times a year despite working out multiple times per day. He says he does not stink. “People that have body odor are very inactive and eat unhealthily,” Laich says. (For the record, body odor itself is not pathological, but it can in rare cases be linked with kidney, liver, or thyroid problems; RMNB is not a doctor.)

The episode contains a few unfortunate conversations. A discussion on the topic of men calling women crazy includes a suspicious lack of self-reflection, as co-hosts reply with, “you’re looking to have an altercation” and “you’re trying to pick a fight on purpose.” Another conversation about soap includes an oblique reference to sexual assault.

You can hear How Men Think on Apple Podcasts