Rob The Hockey Guy

There are a few interesting things going on with the Canucks these days. This team, seemingly poised to go on to win the Northwest Division (barring a late season collapse), has been up and down of late. The team followed up a great road trip with two big wins in back to back nights and looked great doing it. They followed that up by losing to the Islanders and then rebounding to beat the Sharks. They narrowly got beat by the Red Wings after that and then Roberto Luongo collapsed against the basement dwelling Edmonton Oilers.

So what have people been talking about? Front page news this morning was the play of Andrew Raycroft in last night’s win over the Ducks. After all, the fans were chanting “Raycroft Raycroft” at the game. Talk radio today was mostly filled with discussion of whether or not Luongo is tired. Is anyone looking at the NHL leading scorers lately?

No, I didn’t photoshop that. It’s March 25th and Henrik Sedin is leading the league in scoring! Henrik Sedin, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby… who thought those three would ever be used in the same sentence? Henrik has a chance to do what no Canuck has ever done, win an Art Ross Trophy. He’s also become the all-time club leader in assists and has a chance to break Pavel Bure’s franchise record for points in a season. What is truly amazing is this has come without any standing ovations, chants of “Hen-rik Hen-rik” at General Motors Place or anything of the sort. He’s quite simply the quietest, most underrated scoring leader at this stage of the season in recent memory. True, Alex Ovechkin has played in 11 fewer games than Henrik and he’ll likely win the Hart Trophy. But will Henrik Sedin even get nominated?

I can understand that a player like Henrik Sedin would likely fly under the radar in other NHL cities, given how quietly he goes about his business. But I think the city of Vancouver has to start showing him some respect.

I was thinking that you hardly ever see “H. Sedin” jerseys when I saw this fight at the Ducks-Canucks game Wednesday night (one section over from where I was sitting):

That was actually one of the best fan fights I’ve ever seen at GM Place, and surely the best one by a guy wearing a Henrik Sedin jersey. But does this video finally prove that wearing Henrik’s #33 is cool? Despite being the top players on the team ever since the lockout, I’m not sure that wearing the #33 or #22 has been the “cool” thing to do. After all, you see far more Luongo, Kesler, Burrows, Mitchell and Bieksa jerseys out there.

Henrik (and Daniel for that matter) has worked his tail off all year, and the player we have seen grow up right before our eyes has arrived as an elite player in the NHL. He’s now a gritty, two-way forward who puts up huge numbers in the regular season and has been dependable in the playoffs also (did you know that he has two career playoff overtime goals? That’s only 2 fewer than Wayne Gretzky). I, for one, am hoping that Henrik Sedin can win the scoring race and finally get a little bit of recognition for perhaps the best season ever put together by a Vancouver Canuck.