Robin Lehner backs off Alain Vigneault with new statement

Robin Lehner knows how to get people to react. This weekend, the Vegas Golden Knights goalie fired off tweets about players’ health and medical treatment as things quickly escalated. He accused teams of giving out benzodiazepines and Ambien to employees when they travel. Lehner clarified that the Knights were not one of the teams he was referencing.In a follow-up tweet, Lehner referred to Flyers coach Alain Vigneault as a “dinosaur” who treated people like “robots not human” and claimed he had proof Vigneault should be fired.

The Flyers and the head coach himself responded to the allegations, denying that the coaching staff provided health care to players in a statement Sunday. Vigneault himself mentioned how he had no clue what Lehner was referring to. 

Lehner has never played for Vigneault in his 11-year career, which includes stops in Ottawa, Buffalo, the New York Islanders and Chicago before he was traded to Vegas back in 2020. 

When Vigneault denied the claims Lehner made about the pills, the goalie informed ESPN’s Emily Kaplan that he was only criticizing the way Vigneault treats his players — “which he believes is unacceptable” — and not accuse him of passing pills.

This was not Lehner’s first rant on social media, he, for the past months, has been calling out the Buffalo Sabres for the poor treatment of former captain Jack Eichel, who is still awaiting to undergo surgery on his neck. Lehner is adamant that Eichel is a top player in the league and deserves better respect on what needs to be done for his body and health. 

The goalie does not want folks to see these comments as him going after the Sabres : as he explains, if he wanted to go after the team he played for back from 2015 to 2018, he would have shown proof of how they messed up his ankle during this career. 

“I tore everything in my foot…the shit they did to some of the players was crazy man. They had me on the bike one week after my [ankle sprain]. I should’ve just been walking after 6-8 weeks,” Lehner explained this summer. 

“They hired like 12, 13 new people on that team that year that never played, never been around hockey.”

Lehner is very vocal on different issues in the NHL, especially when he sits down in front of his Twitter account. However, he needed to make the precisions on Vigneault as many folks believed he was calling him out for illegally passing pills to players. 

His precision is now having fans wondering if he needs to be taken seriously when he starts typing on social media…