I definitely watch far fewer games when times are tough, though I have to admit CDC is pretty much a mainstay. That said, when we're losing a lot and negativity reigns supreme, I distance myself from hockey-related talk. I either get angry myself or jealous of the success of other teams and find that it's not healthy for me.
Regarding taking a break altogether, I haven't done it strictly with hockey, but I have done a similar thing with watching YouTube videos. I used to be subscribed to several YouTube channels that put out a couple videos each day and began to find it incredibly draining to watch their content, even though I enjoyed it at first. It became a chore, another task to complete. I ended up cutting out a lot of YouTube from my life and although I now still watch quite a bit, I'm more disciplined about making sure I only subscribe to channels that infrequently put out content and I manage how many videos I want to watch.
The closest I've come to this with hockey outside of the darker times of 2015 through 2018 or so was during the 2011 playoffs. During that run, I realized that my emotions were so severely affected by the outcome of the games (especially in the Finals) that it worried me. Should I be invested so deeply in something that has little to do with my life directly, yet also controls my emotions so heavily?
Honestly, I'm not sure what I concluded after that, but suffice it to say that in tense moments during games, I try to remind myself of the perspective I gained in that time and not lose sight of the fact that, while I'm passionate and care deeply about how my Canucks perform, there are many things more important in life and the results of the game are not life and death.