Sedins fittingly enter Hall of Fame together
They could have wound up on opposite coasts with separate NHL teams.
But they’ll walk into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday as they skated through life, their plaques side by side in the Great Hall — and it’s still a challenge for the public to tell them apart, even at age 42.
On the ice, Daniel and Henrik Sedin had no trouble finding each other, finding puck paths no teammate or defender had seen until they exploited it.
“Sometimes, even ourselves, we can maybe think that something strange is going on,” Henrik said of their seeming telepathy at the height of their success.
“It’s the twin thing,” said Brian Burke, the former Vancouver Canucks general manager who engineered drafting them second and third overall in 1999. “It’s real and thank God they had it.”
Daniel, the left winger, turned the majority of centre Henrik’s 830 assists into 393 goals. But Daniel could also pass and Henrik was a fine sniper. Their total points and games played were near mirror images. Henrik amassed 1,070 points in 1,330 contests, Daniel 1,041 in 1,306 outings.
“They were so good together,” said Canucks’ Sportsnet TV analyst John Garrett. “Think Bossy-trottier, Hull-oates.
“Henrik and Daniel would complete no-look passes or throw pucks into open areas knowing the other would get there.”
The radar has been working since they started at age 8 in the Swedish hockey factory of Ornskoldsvik, though they weren’t linemates until 14 when left shooting Henrik moved from wing to centre. At 16, they were Swedish club players of the year at Modo, counting down to the 1999 draft.
Daniel said the twins were resigned to ending up on different teams. Burke, who held the third pick after Vancouver missed the playoffs in four straight years, has said many times that neither twin truly excited him at the ’99 world juniors. But scout Thomas Gradin kept urging him to pick one and somehow obtain the other.
Burke eventually pulled off deals to obtain the first overall selection from the Islanders, promising to then swap with Atlanta if they promised to take forward Patrik Stefan.
The Sedins were still a hard sell in the early years.
“At first, people wondered who were these two skinny Swedes,” Garrett said. “They weren’t half as strong as they would eventually become.
“Yet, every year, they were coming in first and second in the conditioning tests, the V02 max, everything.
“They didn’t play a lot at first. They were still getting used to the smaller ice and everyone being bigger than them. Vancouver is a tough media market and some critics were calling them a lot of things.”
But they found their game in due time, melding with countryman Markus Naslund to form the West Coast Express line. After the twins’ arrival, the Canucks made the playoffs in 10 of the next 12 years.
The early 2010s brought success: Henrik and Daniel won the Art Ross Trophy in consecutive seasons, new Vancouver captain Henrik snapping Alex Ovechkin’s bid for a third straight Hart Trophy, with Daniel winning the Ted Lindsay as the players’ MVP.
But in their first and only Stanley Cup Final in 2011, the Canucks lost to Boston in seven games.
“They didn’t get over the top, but they did get to Game 7 of the final,” Burke told Sportsnet. “You better get used to seeing people who didn’t get a ring, because there are 32 teams now. With all the other things they did, all the international stuff (the 2006 Olympic gold with Sweden), all the awards, they deserve to be (in the Hall).”
The Sedins put in many more productive seasons after 2011 up to their last game on April 7, 2018.
“They played through a lot and there was never any controversy linked to them,” Garrett said. “They led by example, they were competitive. Just look how many times they played all 82 games (11 seasons for Henrik, nine for Daniel including two years when he missed just one night).
“As captain, Henrik never shied away from tough questions.”
They were known for pranks. Daniel would put on Henrik’s 33 after a game to conduct interviews as his brother, vice versa with Henrik wearing 22.
Henrik was known to have been kicked out of a faceoff by a linesman, go over and talk to Daniel and after slowly circling each other, Henrik would go back in the circle without the officials noticing.
They became a big part of the larger Vancouver community, making a $1.5 million donation to B.C. Children’s Hospital on behalf of themselves and their wives, Marinette and Johanna. Daniel’s wife, Marinette, studied psychology at UBC and has helped launch reading initiatives in the city.