{"id":939201,"date":"2026-10-24T11:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T11:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939201\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T11:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T11:30:08","slug":"lightning-captain-victor-hedman-leaves-game-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939201\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning captain Victor Hedman leaves game early"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hedman took only one shift in the second period and was not on the bench for the rest of the game as the Lightning lost 6-3 to the Colorado Avalanche. He finished the game with only 5:56 of ice time.<\/p>\n<p>The team did not announce a reason for his absence during the game and head coach Jon Cooper was not asked about Hedman&#8217;s status post-game.<\/p>\n<p>Hedman, 35, had appeared in all 10 Lightning games so far this season, scoring two goals and four points.<\/p>\n<p>He missed the final month of the 2025-26 season due to what he later revealed was performance anxiety.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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 game day would hit,&#8221; Hedman said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/news\/victor-hedman-ready-to-return-to-tampa-bay-lightning-after-taking-leave-of-absence\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/news\/victor-hedman-ready-to-return-to-tampa-bay-lightning-after-taking-leave-of-absence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">over the summer<\/a>. &#8220;It kind of locks you up. You make a mistake and in the past you&#8217;d be able to shake it off, but I couldn&#8217;t do that. And I wasn&#8217;t feeling 100 per cent physically.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hedman is in his 18th NHL season. The Lightning continue their road trip at the Utah Mammoth on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hedman took only one shift in the second period and was not on the bench for the rest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-939201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}