There’s a scene in D2: The Mighty Ducks where the titular hockey team tries to pull the Flying V on the formidable (and far more physically mature) Team Iceland. They get crushed. Conway and co. hit the blue line like they’re playing red rover, with all five Ducks taking heavy hits, and Iceland breaking back five-on-none.
Nevermind that four of those checks are interference. The lesson of the scene is simple: that’s what happens when you get too cute in the game of hockey.
It’s a lesson the Sedins have never learned. They play cute hockey. They’ve been playing that way their entire career, and they get punished for it constantly. But they never change. And why should they? Their stuff works. No one’s red-rovering them at the blueline.
But boy, do teams every try. And wouldn’t you? After 90 seconds of keepaway, with drop passes, flip-passes, no-looks, what-have-you from these smug, identical twin brothers, wouldn’t you just be desperate to paste one of them into the boards? Put aside your love for the Sedins for a moment. You’re no longer watching them -- now you’re defending them. Are they not infuriating?
Canadian hockey is built around destroying everything the Sedins are about. Think about the 1976 game between the Philadelphia Flyers and HC CSKA Moscow, where the Red Army’s talent was unmatched, but some dirty, dirty hockey from Bobby Clarke and his friends managed to muffle the skill on display and turn the whole thing into a symposium on toughness. That’s how you handle cute hockey in Canada.
So it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that clubs, most of whom are coached by old Canadian guys who idolized that era of Flyers hockey, ratchet up the physicality against the Sedins. That’s how you handle them. Wear them down. Bruise them up. Make them play ugly hockey, the kind two dudes with matching, perfectly-trimmed goatees probably aren’t eager to play.
And yet, Vancouver hockey fans want to act like the extra physicality the twins face is a sign they get no respect when, in reality, it’s evidence they get more than most. Disrespecting them is part of the gameplan. Teams don’t gameplan for Adam Cracknell.
And then we whine about this perceived disrespect, like John Garrett did on the Canucks’ website just last week, the occasion being Mikhail Grabovski's boarding of Henrik. From Canucks.com:
Mikhail Grabovski hits Henrik right in the numbers and runs him into the boards. He gets five and a game and nothing more. The league says that because it happened so early in the game it is like a one game suspension. The refs called a roughing penalty on Matt Bartkowski without taking an Islander off so the punishment was a game misconduct and a three minute penalty. Grabovski is a third line guy with the Islanders and missed two periods for taking out Henrik Sedin for that game and at least three more.
Are you kidding me?
The league says they are trying to sell their stars, well then treat them like stars not like second-class citizens.
This is silly. Grabovski’s punishment was pretty consistent with how the NHL handles these matters. But that’s hardly the issue: Garrett and several other Canucks fans seem to think that the punishment for doing Henrik or Daniel dirty should be more severe, just by virtue of who they are, and the respect they’ve earned.
Nonsense. Frankly, it’s a sign the Sedins get too much respect around here -- so much we think there should be a different set of rules for them, that they’re special, and it precludes them from the same physicality and only dirty play that everyone else, stars included, faces on a regular basis.
There shouldn’t be. Nor should there be special rules for any other player or superstar.
How a dirty hit or act is punished shouldn’t change whether you’re an 100-point player or a fourth-line grinder. It’s crazy that we even accept that premise. There should be no difference in how we protect the players in the commercials compared to the players in the press box. That there has been a difference for about a generation explains why things have been so difficult for the enforcers, hockey’s lower-class, in recent years. We need to know better by now.
Granted, I’m just as baffled as you are when the Sedins are left off a list of the NHL’s top players, especially after all they’ve accomplished. Although it’s hard to get too worked up about the Sedins being exempt from today’s clickbait. I’ll save my outrage for a Hall of Fame snub.
As for what happens on the ice, I’d certainly prefer that the Sedins never take another dirty hit. But since they haven’t changed their game in a decade, and we know where that gets them, one suspects we’ll be talking about this topic again quite soon. Hopefully next time we can leave respect out of it.
