Victor Hedman skated one shift in the second period tonight in Colorado and never came back, a worrying sight for the Lightning.
That shift ended at the 3:04 mark of the middle frame. Tampa Bay's bench went the rest of the night without its 35-year-old blueliner.
Hedman finished with 5:56 of ice time and no shots on goal. Why he left is the question nobody has answered yet.
Colorado won 6-3, with Nathan MacKinnon piling up four points. The Lightning's three-game win streak ended in Denver.
Artturi Lehkonen scored the winner. Andrei Vasilevskiy made 18 saves on 23 shots at the other end.
The timing couldn't be worse. Tampa Bay plays in Utah on Saturday night, the back half of a back-to-back.
And he'd been rolling coming into this one. Hedman had two goals and a +3 rating over his previous five games.
Lightning face a thin blue line for Saturday's Utah back-to-back
The veterans left standing aren't exactly young. John Carlson is 36, Ryan McDonagh is 37, and both went minus-2 tonight.
Charles-Edouard D'Astous was the bright spot on the back end. He scored and added an assist in 21:06 of work.
So who fills the gap Saturday? Emil Lilleberg has dressed just four times this season, and Jon Cooper may not have many other options.
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Losing Hedman mid-game is like a restaurant losing its head chef during the dinner rush. The kitchen keeps running, but everybody's covering a station they don't usually work.
At 35, the Swedish veteran still owned a +6 rating through nine games before tonight. He also carries an $8,000,000 cap hit.
The Lightning shouldn't rush this. A veteran leaving after one second-period shift, on the front end of a back-to-back, is a warning sign, and one game in Utah isn't worth the gamble.
Tampa Bay entered tonight at 7-2-0, so there's cushion in the standings. What there isn't yet is an answer on why No. 77 left early.
Should the Lightning sit Victor Hedman on Saturday in Utah even if he says he's ready?
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