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Heddy Days - Nov. 26, 2021 - By Ken Campbell
ALMOST FROM THE MOMENT he learned he’d finally be able to celebrate with the Stanley Cup at home – COVID restrictions prevented that in 2020 – Victor Hedman knew where he wanted to take it first.
It was going to be a long, long day, and he knew what was coming. Of course, he would get the key to the city of Ornskoldsvik, a hockey factory of 33,000 that lies 10 degrees north of Edmonton and is home to Eilert Pilarm, Sweden’s most famous Elvis impersonator. It was a no-brainer. Hedman would take it to Arken Ovik, the conference center and library where he got his first glimpse of the Cup at five-and-a-half when Peter Forsberg brought it there for the first time in 1996.
There would be time with old hockey buddies and coaches and dinner with family and friends that would go well into the night. “Memories that will last forever,” Hedman said, before adding the caveat, “Of course, you can always make more memories.”
But before all of that, though, Hedman knew exactly where he had to take the most beautiful trophy in sports. So he took the Cup to Trysunda Skogskyrkogard, the cemetery where Rune and Irene Westlin are buried. Hedman’s maternal grandparents were a huge influence in his life and were always there for him and his two brothers while his parents both worked full-time jobs. Right up until his death at age 92 in 2017, Rune would wake up each morning and do his gymnastics and stretching. In the winter, he would cross-country ski each day. “He was such a rock for us and a great role model,” Hedman said. “He showed us what hard work was, but he did it because he loved us. Such great people. So in the morning, I went to their grave and showed them the Cup and had a few minutes with them.”
(I’m not crying. You’re crying.)
It should come as no surprise Hedman wanted to share his triumph with others. That’s what he does.
When he won the Conn Smythe Trophy in one of the closest votes in the award’s history in 2020, the first thing he said was, “This is everyone’s trophy. It’s as easy as that.” Well, maybe not quite that easy. The Stanley Cup is everyone’s trophy. That’s why the NHL goes to the pains of engraving everyone’s name on it. But the Conn Smythe is a legacy builder. During that run, Brayden Point led the Lightning in playoff goals and Nikita Kucherov had more assists in a single post-season than anyone not named Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux. But it was Hedman who had an impact on the playoffs like almost no defenseman ever has. He scored 10 goals. He averaged more than 26 minutes a game playing in all situations and against the opponents’ top forwards.
Lightning Star Ranked Among NHL's Best Players
<a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/tampa-bay-lightning">Tampa Bay Lightning</a> defenseman Victor Hedman had another strong season for the Atlantic Division club in 2024-25. In 79 games on the season, the 6-foot-7 blueliner recorded 15 goals, 51 assists, 66 points, 133 blocks, and a plus-18 rating. With this, he led all Lightning defensemen in goals, assists, and points.
Already without captain Steven Stamkos – save for one game where he played less than three minutes and scored a brilliant, narrative-changing goal in the final – the Bolts were losing defensemen and patching their leaky blueline on the fly. Hedman played with each one and made all of them look good. He was the bulwark of a team that had gone from being the greatest offensive show on Earth to a group that could lock teams down. “To me, that was his coming-out party as a leader,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “Not only did he play unbelievably, he led unbelievably. When ‘Stammer’ was gone, everybody stepped up, but Hedman was at the forefront of that.”
It doesn’t seem like that long ago Hedman was in Toronto with the Swedish world-junior team preparing for his second WJC in Ottawa. Just days from his 18th birthday, Hedman was already in his second year of pro hockey in Sweden and was living on his own with his girlfriend (and now wife) Sanna Grundberg, doing all his own cooking and basically living life as an adult. His hair was cropped short. Uncovered by his thick beard, the pink birthmark on his left cheek was visible. He stood with a look of bewilderment, wondering what all the fuss was about and why so many people were interested in him.
He was months away from becoming the second overall pick in the 2009 draft. (Discuss among yourselves whether the New York Islanders would have been better off taking an all-around future Hall of Fame defenseman in Hedman over a dynamic point-per-game offensive leader in John Tavares first overall. It’s an interesting debate, no?)
The Lightning got Hedman second overall – and Steven Stamkos first overall in the preceding draft – because they were a putrid NHL outfit, plagued with bad decisions and infighting between the owners. There would be some lean years, and those are never easy for an 18-year-old defenseman – even one as talented as Hedman.
The next year, though, a billionaire by the name of Jeff Vinik gifted himself a 50th birthday present by buying low on the Lightning. The $110 million he paid for the franchise and the management lease to the arena was actually less than he would later pay for the Marriott hotel across the street from Amalie Arena. Then along came Steve Yzerman and Jon Cooper, and later Julien BriseBois. All the while, Hedman was developing into exactly the defenseman everyone thought he would become, winning the Norris Trophy in 2018. Hedman will almost certainly be in Tampa Bay until his contract expires in 2025, which would leave him months shy of his 35th birthday. His legacy is already secure, his ticket to the Hall punched, what with the Norris, Conn Smythe, two Cups and the indelible imprint he’s had on a mini-dynasty (which has the opportunity to grow into a full-blown one with another Cup).
“Of all our players, he’s probably grown the most since I got here,” Cooper said. “He was just a super nice Swede who was a great player trying to find his way, but now he cares about having an influence. He owned mistakes. He owned when the team didn’t play well. I’ve always said this about Heddy, how he goes oftentimes is how we go.”
Embarrassing first-round sweep at the hands of Columbus in 2019 notwithstanding, things have been going incredibly well for both Hedman and the Lightning the past half-decade. Including 2018 when he won the Norris, Hedman has been a finalist for the trophy and a first- or second-team all-star in each of the past five seasons. Among defensemen in that time, only Brent Burns and John Carlson have outscored him. Only Dougie Hamilton has more even-strength goals, and nobody has a better even-strength goal differential than Hedman.
And last season, Hedman led blueliners in playoff scoring and gutted his way to another Cup while playing on a torn meniscus in his knee that required off-season surgery. “It was one of those things you could still play with, but it’s going to bother him,” Cooper said. “It for sure had an effect on him. He may not readily admit it because he’s not an excuse guy, but there was no doubt. All the great ones say, ‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ but then you talk to your staff and they’re saying, ‘We’ve got to keep him out of practice this day and that day.’”
As the Lightning try to become the first team in four decades to win three consecutive Stanley Cups, they spent the first part of the season looking every bit a Cup contender one night and fading champion the next. The Lightning woke up one morning in the off-season to find their third line of Yanni Gourde, Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman had been replaced by Pierre-Edouard Bellemare between Patrick Maroon and Corey Perry.
The Lightning have a championship pedigree, to be sure, but their depth will be challenged. That’s the reason why Hedman spent the first part of the season logging 25:37 of ice time per game, which is more than two minutes higher than his career average and is the second-highest mark of his career. With two long playoff runs behind him and a heavy all-situations workload plus the Beijing Olympics on the docket this season, that’s an awful lot of mileage to put on a body that has passed its 30th birthday.
And that’s why there was a time early in the season when Victor Hedman was doing some very un-Victor-Hedman-like things.
Case in point was a game in Toronto in early November. With Tampa Bay leading 1-0 in the last minute, the Lightning were a successful clear away from springing Stamkos for an empty-net goal to seal the win. Instead, Hedman put a muffin up the middle of the ice that landed on Tavares’ stick, and you can pretty much guess what happened after that. Then in overtime, Tavares beat Hedman for a loose puck and broke to the Tampa net and Hedman, who had already taken a hooking penalty earlier in the game after being beaten by Mitch Marner, slashed Tavares and went to the penalty box to feel shame. He only got to go free after Toronto scored the OT-winner. Cooper could barely contain his anger after the game, and Hedman, whose body language looked like he wanted to be anywhere other than answering his inquisitors, rolled his eyes and said, “S--- happens.”
EVERYONE IS HUMAN. YOU LOOK AND TOM BRADY THROWS A PICK EVERY NOW AND THEN. DON’T GET ME WRONG, I’M NOT IN THAT CATEGORY, BUT AS AN ATHLETE, YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE MISTAKES– Victor Hedman
Yes, it does. And it often happens to those of whom the most is expected. Hedman idolized Ray Bourque as a youngster. And as brilliant as the all-time great D-man was, he had a penchant for giveaways whose end result was about as predictable as a Hallmark Christmas movie. That’s not because Bourque was deficient. It was because when you handle the puck as much as he did and everything goes through you, you’re bound to be force-fed a crap sandwich occasionally. “Everyone is human,” Hedman said. “You look and Tom Brady throws a pick every now and then. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in that category, but as an athlete, you’re going to make mistakes. It sucks to make mistakes, but it’s bound to happen when you play a lot of minutes and you play in every situation. I believe in my game and I believe in the player I’ve become.”
So what does Hedman go out and do? In his next game, he plays 28:53, takes seven shots, scores a goal and goes plus-4. In the four games after that Toronto debacle, Hedman scored four points and the Lightning did not lose in regulation. That is the kind of bounce-back great players have when they hit a rut.
Hedman and Cooper had a conversation after the Toronto game and there was a quick reset. Just as he doesn’t revel in his great performances, Hedman has been around long enough to know he can trust himself after the poor ones. “The best players in the world, they’re not always going to be the best players,” Cooper said. “Sometimes they do take a step back, but they’ve been so good for so long, you just expect this from them all the time. Also, the reason they’re the best in the world is they can right the ship. There are some games Victor is probably not as excited about as he’d love to be in an 82-game season. But Victor is also a Conn Smythe winner, and those guys know how to self-regulate and right the ship. As a coach, you just have to identify when a player is having a struggle and reset his rudders. Then you leave him alone.”
That’s a lot of boat references, which is perhaps fitting for a player who plies his trade on the Gulf of Mexico and grew up on the Gulf of Bothnia.
The small town of Ornskoldsvik, or Ovik, has long held a fascination for North American hockey fans. It’s the same size as Richfield, Minn. (three NHL players all-time), and Moose Jaw, Sask. (22 NHL players all-time), and has produced 13 NHLers, including some of the most talented the game has ever seen. Starting with Anders Hedberg, a superstar in the World Hockey Association before moving to the NHL at 27, Ovik has produced a steady stream of elite players. Forsberg, of course, is in the Hall of Fame. If not for the pandemic, Daniel and Henrik Sedin would have joined him in 2021. And three years after Hedman retires, he’ll become the fourth. Its visit with Hedman this past summer was the Cup’s fourth trip to Ornskoldsvik, having come twice with Forsberg and once more with Sami Pahlsson.
Ovik has cold winters and lots of water, so naturally, people there took the hint. Hedman honed his skills not on elite travel teams of eight-year-olds who wear jackets and ties to games and wheel their hockey bags behind them but playing unstructured games with his friends. It was only later in his life that he was channeled into the town’s elite Modo organization, a Swedish hockey power that has fallen on hard times of late, dropping to the second-tier Allsvenskan in 2016-17, where it has played since.
WE’RE FOREVER PROUD TO BE SWEDES. WHEN I RETIRE, I’M GOING BACK HOME, AND I WANT MY SON TO BE BROUGHT UP THE SAME WAY I WAS– Victor Hedman
“We were just out there with friends skating for five or six hours a day and doing it just because you think it’s fun,” Hedman said. “It’s just the mentality that everyone wants to be the best and it’s internal competition, especially with the generation of Forsberg, (Markus) Naslund and (Niklas) Sundstrom. Everybody tried to become better than the last one and that internal competition made them all better. It’s pretty amazing that a town that small can produce that many NHL players and good players and great human beings. It was a blessing growing up in that town.”
Yeah, about that quality people stuff. It’s a real thing in Sweden, but even more so in the north, where people work hard and generally seem unimpressed with themselves. When it comes to down-to-earth, quality people who just happen to be brilliant at something, the Sedin twins pretty much set the standard. In many ways, Hedman himself hasn’t changed much from that clean-cut 18-year-old who was perplexed so many people were interested in him. His profession has taken him to Tampa, but Sweden continues to call him back, as it will once he retires and settles down for the rest of his life. That might be after this contract, or he might extend that by a couple of years, depending on whether he feels he can still compete in the best league in the world. The comforts of home are vital, but it’s that connection he feels with the country’s people that draws him there in the off-season and once his career ends.
It’s where he wants Rio Hedman to spend his formative years. Two weeks after the Lightning won the Cup in the bubble in 2020, Hedman and his wife welcomed their first son into the world. Rio is now 13 months old and is already walking and kicking a soccer ball around, which is fitting since he’s named after Rio Ferdinand, the former legendary defender for Manchester United, Hedman’s favorite soccer team.
Rio was born in Tampa, but there is no doubt where his parents want him to grow up and what kind of environment they want to surround him. “Swedes have a reputation for being good people,” Hedman said. “But it’s just who we are and how we were brought up. A lot of credit goes to the parents. Everyone is hardworking and inclusive. We’re forever proud to be Swedes. When I retire, I’m going back home, and I want my son to be brought up the same way I was. Tampa is our second home, and we love it here, but Sweden is always going to be home for us.”
And Hedman would love nothing more than to bring an Olympic gold medal home for his country. Despite the compressed schedule, the COVID challenges and the hectic pace of the past two seasons, he said he’s “jacked up” to represent his country on the world’s biggest sporting stage. If the Swedes manage to win the gold, he’ll become the 10th Swede and the 30th player in history to join the IIHF’s Triple Gold Club, which honors players who have won Olympic gold, a World Championship and a Stanley Cup. (Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom would join him in that exclusive club if the Swedes were to triumph in Beijing.)
Still on the docket is to figure out where the Lightning will go from here. They’re still an elite team. As long as No. 88 is in the net, No. 77 is anchoring the blueline and Nos. 91, 21 and 86 are providing the offense, the Lightning are going to be a force to be reckoned with. Are they still a championship team? It’s hard to absorb the kind of losses the Lightning have and continue to win, but at the very least, they’ll be a difficult out the next couple seasons. At best, they might just have another Stanley Cup in them.
All in all, it’s been a spectacular couple of years for Victor Hedman, who turns 31 Dec. 18. In a 10-month span, he won two Stanley Cups and the Conn Smythe Trophy and welcomed his first child into the world. These are indeed the best of times for him and the Lightning. “The last year has been tough to beat,” Hedman said. “Having a baby and two Cups has been out of this world. The last six or seven years, though, feels like it has been moving a little too quickly. But it’s gotten me to where I want to be, and it’s been a tremendous ride.”
Lightning are back at camp excited and determined for more
It’s been just over four months since the Lightning were on the ice together. It was clear across the board on Thursday at TGH IcePlex that the coaches and players shared an equal excitement to be back.