Player of the Week: Daniel Sedin

Another week, another player — this time with more Sedinery. It was only matter of time, though. It’s a bit of a weird week because the Canucks only played twice in the last seven days, and in the last one they played last Friday, they were blown out 5-0 by the worst team in the Western Conference, the Arizona Coyotes. Seriously, the worst. So, unfortunately there isn’t a lot to draw from there, but we’ll always have Daniel Sedin’s glorious winner at 4:05 of overtime on November 11th against the Ottawa Senators.

Henrik and Daniel Sedin doing Sedin-like things against the Senators on November 11, 2014 (photo Jonathan Hayward)

I’m sure I’ll talk about Henrik Sedin at some point — because two posts about twins is better than one — but it’s worth mentioning that it’s safe to say the Sedins are having a a relatively solid comeback year, so to speak, after last year’s disaster. I promise I’ll stop bringing up last year in what’s probably been every post so far, but it’s so blatantly clear that Willie Desjardins’ coaching style suits the Sedins a heck of a lot more than Tortorella’s. It goes without saying, really, that the Sedins not killing penalties — because why should they be — has proven exactly why they shouldn’t have been doing so in the first place. We know they’re getting ‘up there’ at the ripe old age of 34, and sure, they’ve declined a bit, but they’re Swedish and they’ll probably play until they’re 53 anyway, so they have a few years left in them.

Anyway, back to Daniel: In 18 games played so far this season, the younger of the two Sedins (by 6 whole minutes), has 4 goals, 12 assists and 16 points. His overtime goal against the Ottawa Senators also gave him 11 career overtime goals, which is a franchise-high, and 2 more than former Canuck Brendan Morrison (whom I miss deeply, but that is neither here nor there).

Let’s take one more look at that overtime goal because, if anything, Canucks fans like to live in the past. (Relax, I’m a die-hard Canucks fan. I say this because I know it’s true and I do this myself fairly regularly. I digress, just watch the goal again.)

What a beaut, that Daniel Sedin.

Miraculously, in Friday’s blowout loss against the Coyotes, Daniel had a +/- of 0, which is what we like to call around here a moral victory — so congrats, Danny, for not being on the ice for any of those goals against.

That being said, it’s comforting to see the Sedins playing steady and consistently — while it’s unlikely they won’t reach the same level of Sedinery we’ve loved over the years, they’re still out there, doing Sedin stuff, and I’m ok with it.