Victor Hedman has been on the ice at practice. He’s been on the ice for morning skates. Now it looks like he’ll be on the ice for the Tampa Bay Lightning’s outdoor contest against the Boston Bruins on Sunday night. Reports are that the Lightning captain will be ready to make his return as the team entertains the hockey world. While it’s not 100% official, everything points to The Big Swede playing in his first game since December 9th. Even his coach expects him to play.
Injury update: Lightning coach Jon Cooper on #GoBolts captain Victor Hedman and tomorrow’s Stadium Series game: “Barring him coming in and saying no, which I think is extremely doubtful, he’ll most likely be in tomorrow.”
The captain could make his return.
— Benjamin Pierce (@boltsben.bsky.social) January 31, 2026 at 12:54 PM
Elbow surgery has kept the 35-year-old out for the longest stretch of his career as he’s missed 34 games this season. In the 18 games he did play this year, Hedman racked up 12 assists (including 6 on the power play) so the offense has been there. Without knowing exactly how long the injury has been bothering him, it’s hard to judge his season on just 18 games, but it did seem like he was off his game defensively compared to the standard he has set over his time in Tampa.
The underlying numbers seem to back it up as well:
Again, we’re talking about a fairly small sample size so there is a good chance that by the end of the season he’s back up where we’re used to seeing him.
In the meantime, the big question will be how Coach Cooper deploys his future hall-of-famer. Hedman has spent the majority of his Lightning career at the top of the heap, however the play of J.J. Moser and Darren Raddysh during Hedman’s absence might prevent that.
TOIGF/60GA/60SF/60SA/60CF/60CA/60xGF/60xGA/60J.J. MoserDarren Raddysh531.13.310.9932.2321.5671.6945.173.502.32Victor HedmanJ.J. Moser160.22.611.8132.8430.3275.6555.813.602.40Victor HedmanDarren Raddysh33.41.691.9017.3531.1742.2957.221.712.96Data provided by Evolving Hockey
If that chart tells us nothing else, it’s that the Hedman/Raddysh pairing is best left in the past. Which leaves Coach Cooper with the choose between keeping the Moser/Raddysh pairing or going back to the Hedman/Moser duo that we saw most of last year and to start this season.
Our vote is to stay the course. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t fix what’s not broken. Laissez les bons temp rouler. The Lightning have rolled through the last month based on the strength of their defensive play, and the Moser/Raddysh pairing has been pretty solid in preventing goals.
Keeping things the way they are and pairing Hedman with Max Crozier would also deepen the defensive corps overall. For fun, lets say Victor Hedman doesn’t return to the defensive form we saw last year. Even then he’s still a better option than Declan Carlile at this point of his career. So, the Lightning roll with:
Moser – Raddysh
McDonagh – Cernak
Hedman – Crozier
Carlile
That isn’t too shabby. It would also allow Coach Cooper to balance out the playing time of all three pairings and he wouldn’t have to have Moser or McDonagh playing 26 minutes a night. If we look back at the last game Hedman played all the way through, the 5v5 ice time was fairly balanced:
Charle-Edouard D’Astous: 19:12
Darren Raddysh: 18:04
Emil Lilleberg: 18:12
J.J. Moser: 18:31
Max Crozier: 14:01
Victor Hedman: 15:00
A four-minute swing in playing time isn’t that huge, in fact it’s just a handful of shifts over the course of the night.
One of the noticeable drop-offs in Hedman’s game this season has been his defensive zone retrievals.
Information provided by All Three Zones
For as long as Corey Sznajder has been tracking this microdata, Hedman has excelled at retrieving the puck and getting it out of the zone. This season, not so much. As we all know, the Lightning get into their most trouble when they fail to clear the zone and allow their opponents multiple chances. It’s something to keep an eye on as the season moves forward.
Something else to keep an eye on will be his special teams playing time. It’s unlikely that Coach Cooper will break up the first power play unit at this point. While they are still middle of the pack over the course of the season, since December 9, they are third in the league at 28.2% and Raddysh has 7 goals and 5 assists from his spot at the top of the first power play unit. It wouldn’t be the first time Hedman has been usurped from the top unit. Two seasons ago it was Mikhail Sergachev that was manning the point with The Big Swede taking his turn on the second unit.
The Lightning will get a few games to test things out before the break and Hedman heads over to represent Sweden. Is an outdoor spectacle the best test for his return? Probably not, but there will be some solid tests with Buffalo and Florida on the schedule.