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Over a three-hour conversation with the National Post, the Princeton, B.C., native is at his most lucid when reminiscing about his hockey glory days, which saw him play for the Washington Capitals off and on for several seasons. There’s no question Peat — whose name appears in online rankings of the NHL’s “greatest fights” — is still proud of his bareknuckle brawls.

But when the conversation turns to what’s happened since he retired in 2007, his shoulders slouch.

“When the curtain goes down, no one sees that f—ing part. No one’s cheering me on right now, you know?” he says. “They don’t see the struggles.”

Peat, who’s had several run-ins with the law, says he feels abandoned by the league that employed him in the 2000s and lashes out at his father for giving a distorted picture to the media of his problems, insisting he is not a “f—ing drug addict fall-down.”

But Peat’s buddy, Howie Zaron, who has known Peat — or “Peaty” as he likes to call him — since he was a teenager, confirms that much of the picture Walter Peat has painted is true.

”This is the worst he’s been,” Zaron told the Post this week. “We’ve seen Peaty and we are gravely concerned.”

Peat is among scores of former NHL players who have made headlines for their battles with depression, substance abuse and other problems that they or their families attribute to repeated head blows on the ice. Many of those players are now part of a class-action lawsuit in U.S. federal court alleging that the league did not protect players from the risks of brain trauma.