Hedman Takes Home Hardware
By Victor Cabrera
At the 2018 NHL Awards in Las Vegas the league announced the players who won a award for their efforts throughout the season. The Norris trophy is handed out to the best defensemen throughout the season. Victor Hedman won this year’s Norris trophy beating his opposing candidates P.K. Subban (Nashville) and Drew Doughty (Los Angeles). Both of the other candidates had won a Norris trophy in their career but the Swedish defensemen has cemented his spot in recent years as one of the top in the league. This is Hedman’s first Norris trophy although he was a candidate last year. He’s been selected to the last two All-Star games although he could not play this year’s because of a leg injury. The injury only made Hedman miss 5 games which didn’t impact his season much.
Through Tampa’s great season Hedman was stellar in both the defensive zone and offensive zone. In 77 games he had 17 goals and 46 assists for a total of 63 points along with a +/- of 32. He had the highest ice time of the team per game at 25:51. His 17 goals gave Hedman the league leading scoring title by defensemen, along with Dougie Hamilton of the Calgary Flames. In this season Hedman become the franchise leading goal scoring defensemen with 82 goals. In 17 games through the playoffs he had 1 goal and 10 assists for 11 points total along with a +/- of -4. He made it to the conference final with the Lightning while his opposing candidates were eliminated earlier in the playoffs. This past season was one for the books for Tampa and Victor Hedman demonstrated his skill as the best defensemen in the league, the hope is that there’s more of this to come from the defensemen.