Mar 25, 2026, 03:43 PM ET<\/p>\n
TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> captain Victor Hedman<\/a> is taking a temporary leave of absence for personal reasons, the team announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n The Lightning did not share further details and asked for Hedman’s privacy to be respected.<\/p>\n The Swedish defenseman is in his 17th NHL season, all with Tampa Bay, a run that includes back-to-back Stanley Cup titles in 2020 and ’21 and two additional trips to the final. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP in the 2020 bubble.<\/p>\n Hedman, 35, missed time in November, December and January because of injury and subsequent elbow surgery to repair it.<\/p>\n He returned in early February and represented his country at this year’s Milan Cortina Olympics. Hedman has a goal and 16 assists and is averaging nearly 19 minutes of ice time over 33 games for the likely playoff-bound Lightning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mar 25, 2026, 03:43 PM ET TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Bay Lightning captain Victor Hedman is taking a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-545190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}