{"id":241223,"date":"2026-04-22T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T02:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/241223\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T02:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T02:07:00","slug":"hedman-doubtful-to-play-for-lightning-in-eastern-1st-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/241223\/","title":{"rendered":"Hedman \u2018doubtful\u2019 to play for Lightning in Eastern 1st Round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/victor-hedman-8475167\" title=\"Victor Hedman\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Victor Hedman<\/a>\u00a0could return to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, coach Jon Cooper said Tuesday, but it\u2019s unlikely he will do so in the Eastern Conference First Round.<\/p>\n<p>The defenseman and Lightning captain hasn&#8217;t played since leaving during the first period of a 6-2 win at the Vancouver Canucks on March 19 because of an illness, missing their final 15 games of the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>On March 25, the team announced Hedman was taking a leave of absence for personal reasons. The 35-year-old had 17 points (one goal, 16 assists) and was limited to 33 games.<\/p>\n<p>Hedman, who has been around the team, was on the ice after Tampa Bay\u2019s optional morning skate ahead of Game 2 against the Montreal Canadiens at Benchmark International Arena on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The Lightning, who are looking to advance past the first round for the first time in four seasons, trail 1-0 in the best-of-7 series.<\/p>\n<p>Cooper said Hedman could return, \u201cat some point, I think, but not right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t rule anything out,\u201d the coach said, \u201cbut I\u2019d say I\u2019d put that on the doubtful side for this series.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hedman played the first 15 games of the season but sustained an undisclosed injury on Nov. 8 and didn&#8217;t return until Dec. 6, missing 12 games. He played just three games after that before being placed on injured reserve Dec. 11. Four days later, the Lightning announced he would have a procedure on his elbow that would likely keep him out until February. Hedman missed 22 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA &#8212; Victor Hedman\u00a0could return to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, coach Jon Cooper&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-241223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}