Tampa Bay Lightning captain Victor Hedman is feeling healthy and ready to return for his 18th NHL season.
The 35-year-old defenceman suited up in just 33 games last year due to injury and a personal leave of absence but is now ready and motivated to get the Lightning back to contender status after a string of first-round exits.
“For me, it’s just feeling healthy and feeling like my body is where I want it to be,” Hedman told NHL.com. “You’re on the ice every day, you’re in the gym and you feel good, and that makes, obviously, the mental part easier too when you feel you can perform in your job to the fullest extent. I haven’t played in a long time, but I’m super fresh, hungry and super motivated to go out there and play my best hockey.
“I’m happy it happened at this stage in my career where I know what I can do, I know what I can bring to the team, and I know what I can do on a daily basis when I’m healthy. I have zero doubt in my mind. I’ve had a great summer and I feel great going into camp.”
Hedman stepped away from the Lightning in late March to address his mental health and further opened up about why anxiety made it difficult for him to perform to his standards, forcing him to temporarily step away.
“For me, it was not really feeling low, but it was performance anxiety, kind of feeling that pressure in your chest as soon as a gameday would hit,” Hedman said. “It kind of locks you up. You make a mistake and in the past you’d be able to shake it off, but I couldn’t do that. And I wasn’t feeling 100 per cent physically.”
Hedman dealt with a slew of injuries throughout the 2025-26 season, missing 12 games in November with an undisclosed issue before being placed on injured reserve in December after undergoing elbow surgery.
He would return to the Lightning just before the Olympic break and played four games for Sweden in Milano-Cortina before sustaining an injury in warmups prior to the nation’s quarter-final overtime loss to the United States.
The Ornskoldsvik, Sweden native played the first 12 games out of the Olympic break but left after the first period on March 19 against the Vancouver Canucks and did not return to the ice for the remainder of the season. He finished the campaign with one goal and 17 points in 33 games, all career lows for the seven-time All-Star.
“With the elbow, I felt like I was behind on the plays,” Hedman said. “I wasn’t skating well, and that’s one of my biggest strengths. When I skate and I skate well that’s when I’m at my best. I just thought all of those combinations made me come to the conclusion that I obviously need to step away and focus on [getting healthy] before rejoining the team, looking more like myself again both on the ice and off the ice.”
Hedman’s absence extended through the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, where Tampa Bay was eliminated in seven games by the Montreal Canadiens. The 2017-18 Norris Trophy winner began skating on his own during the series, but chose not to rush back because he still wasn’t feeling like himself.
“I felt it was important for me to do to get a handle on everything mentally and physically,” Hedman said. “Someone told me that for good leaders sometimes doing the right thing for the team is to kind of step away. I thought that was the right decision for me. I wasn’t myself on the ice. I felt I wasn’t helping the team. So, I felt the best thing for the team was for me to focus on myself. I don’t regret that decision at all. It was the right thing to do.”
The two-time Stanley Cup champion hopes he can now use his platform to destigmatize mental health in sports.
“The stigma, I think it’s getting a lot better but it’s still probably there,” Hedman said. “At the same time, people go through this, and it’s a lot more people than you think. It’s good to be able to put it out there, that it is OK not to be OK.”
