Bolts' Hedman gets plenty of time to impress in preseason debut

Tampa Bay Lightning rookie Victor Hedman jumped into NHL action with both skates on Wednesday in his preseason debut.

The 6-foot-6, 220-pound defenseman, who was selected second overall in the 2009 draft, logged a game-high 27 minutes, 15 seconds in Tampa Bay's 4-3 shootout loss to Dallas, the preseason opener for both teams.

Judging from his performance, the teenager looked nothing like a wide-eyed kid.

"Victor is an excellent player,'' Lightning coach Rick Tocchet said. "He makes mistakes, like everybody, and we'll work with him. But I think the poise at his age can't be taught; that's in him. He's got some poise back there.''

Hedman spent most of his night up against some of Dallas' top-line players, including Brad Richards, Mike Modano, Louie Eriksson and James Neal at even strength and was a stalwart on special teams, playing 7:37 of power-play time and 6:27 on the penalty kill. The team's top prospect loved every minute of it.

"It was great. It was good to get started,'' Hedman said. "I didn't expect to play that much, but it was great to play so much. I feel that I play better when I play a lot, so it was a good experience to play a lot.''

Hedman even showed he's willing to stand up for himself during a grappling match with Dallas' Jamie Benn in the corner in which both players gloves came flying off, although no punches were thrown. Both players received roughing calls, with Benn whistled for an extra holding penalty.

"He dropped the gloves, and I'm not the kind of guy who steps back,'' Hedman said. "But the referees stepped in and we got two minutes, so it was nice to be able to get back out on the ice quickly.''

Tocchet said to expect to see a lot more of Hedman during the preseason as the Bolts want to put him in as many situations as possible.

"Usually in these games you want to get everybody involved and give them an equal amount of ice time, but you also want to see this guy log some minutes, and he can obviously handle the minutes,'' Tocchet said.