CHICAGO – When I first met Victor Hedman at the 2009 NHL Draft, there were three things that stood out about him.
1. His freakish build. He looked like someone used a taffy pull to stretch Benicio Del Toro into Zdeno Chara’s body. Six-foot-six, over 220 pounds. A specimen on the level of a Chris Pronger, with a somewhat less apparent sadism.
2. That he wanted to be a hockey player/pilot, like Alexei Kovalev before him, a great aspiration that likely would be scuttled by whichever team drafted him as a franchise pillar. (You know, him being a multi-million dollar investment and all.