Since the 2009-10 season, Tampa Bay Lightning superstar defenseman Victor Hedman has been one of hockey's very best blueliners. And in this feature story from THN's Jan. 12, 2009 edition, senior writer Ken Campbell profiled Hedman just before he was drafted by the Bolts with the second-overall pick in the 2009 entry draft:

TOWER POWER

By Ken Campbell

The next time you attempt to get your good-for-nothing teen-ager to maybe clean his room and straighten up and fly right, consider the case of young Victor Hedman.

He turned 18 in December, but three months ago moved into his own apartment with his girlfriend (all right, so you’re probably not so crazy about that part) where he pays his own bills, cooks his own food and keeps his surroundings from looking as though they’ve been hit by a hurricane.

“I really like cooking and my girlfriend does, too,” Hedman said. “I think it’s nice to do your own laundry and stuff like that. I think it’s good and I don’t see it as a problem for me. My parents helped us to find an apartment and they’re really supporting me to do this.”

So when Hedman arrives in the NHL next season, almost certainly as either the first or second overall pick, at least the team that chooses him knows it won’t have to coddle him by putting him into a veteran player’s basement and hold his hand while he goes to open a bank account for the first time.

And things are expected to go even better on the ice. Hedman has emerged as a serious threat to dislodge John Tavares as the No. 1 pick in the 2009 NHL draft. He’s a smooth skater for a guy who’s 6-foot-7 and weighs 220 pounds, he has a very good shot, can take care of the area in front of his net and is gaining experience playing with men in the Swedish Elite League for the MoDo hockey factory in Ornskoldsvik this season.

(For a northern town of just 55,000, Ovik, as it’s known, is prodigious for producing elite NHL players, going back to Anders Hedberg in the 1970s and following it up with the likes of Peter Forsberg, Markus Naslund and Daniel and Henrik Sedin. The city that is about 300 miles north of Stockholm and accounts for just 0.6 percent of the country’s population has produced a total of 10 players who have played in the NHL. It is home to one of Sweden’s 25 “hockey gymnasiums,” which are essentially high schools for elite players.)

Scouts and other observers have compared Hedman to Nicklas Lidstrom, but Swedish national junior team coach Par Marts shudders at the thought of comparing a kid who just turned 18 to one of the best defensemen ever to play the game. Others liken him to Chris Pronger. Does that mean he’s as nasty as Pronger?

“I don’t think any Swedish player is that nasty,” said Tommy Boustedt, the GM of Sweden’s team for the World Junior Championship and Sweden’s director of youth development. “The days of the chicken-hearted Swede are over, but the only problem for Victor is that he hasn’t had to play a really tough game.

“But he is very mentally tough and I think he will be able to adapt to a more aggressive game in North America.”

Marts agrees Hedman has all sorts of dynamic physical tools, but it’s his approach to the game and ability to deal with obstacles that makes him a special player.

“His head is his strongest weapon,” Marts said. “He has both feet on the ground and he’s prepared to work very hard to make his dream come true. He’s big and he’s strong and he’s determined to be a star.”

In many ways, Hedman represents a new breed of Swedish player. After their disastrous loss to Belarus in the 2002 Winter Olympics, Sweden held a hockey summit chaired by Boustedt, much the way Canada did after disastrous finishes in the WJC and Olympics in 1998. Since then, the Swedes have played with much more of a swagger and now go into tournaments expecting to win, not just put on a good show and exhibit to everyone how polite they can be (but boy, they are exceedingly polite, nonetheless).

It was then that, under Boustedt, Sweden instituted a five-year plan for getting back to international hockey prominence, a plan that was revised and reinstituted last season.

And in the same way North Americans have poached a lot of the skill development from the European game, the Swedes wanted to take a little of the grit and sandpaper from the Canadian playbook.

“The biggest change has been in the attitude of the players and the coaches and scouts have noticed that, too,” Boustedt said. “Players now understand what it takes to become an elite player at the international level. In Sweden, we live in a social democratic system and you do not have to put in that much effort to have a good life. But in a place like Russia, you really have to work to be something and that’s what we wanted to put into our system.

“We wanted to make (the players) take more of the personal responsibility for what they do, how they practise, how they eat, how they prepare for the game.”

If Hedman is any example, it’s an attitude change that is working. Hedman is one of five Swedish players who could go in the first round of the draft in 2009, including potential top-five pick Magnus Svensson-Paajarvi, a left winger for Timra also playing with men twice his age in the Elite League. But it is the towering defenseman Hedman who could become the first Swedish-born player drafted first overall since Mats Sundin was selected by the Quebec Nordiques 20 years prior.

“I am stronger than ever before,” Hedman said. “This summer was better than ever before for that. I have more muscles and I’m stronger than ever before.”

Whether or not Hedman goes first will depend in part on how the behemoth and Tavares performed in the WJC. Both were expected to be front-line players for their teams in a tournament that is usually more suited to 19-year-olds.

The two players are nothing alike and play different positions, so whichever player goes first will come down to the needs of the team picking first overall. For Hedman, all he can do is put his best massive skate forward until draft day.

“I think my best qualities are my skating for my size and I like to join the offensive rush,” he said. “I like to be a good two-way defenseman. I try to be good on everything and that’s what I’m practising for every day.”