Canucks Army Year in Review: Henrik Sedin

I’m sort of in draft mode right now, so the only players I took on for the Year in Review series are the Sedin twins, who I am a big fan of. The twins had an interesting year, in which they were diametrically opposed in a lot of ways. They’re production and underlying numbers weren’t that far apart, but it sure seemed like their level of play was at times. Daniel was healthy for the majority of the season, while Henrik… not so much.

While there was lots to celebrate when it came to Daniel, most of Henrik’s season was dark and brooding. He was either getting crunched into the boards, or stiffening up, or breaking down, or getting angry. Very angsty.

That said, he did manage to have a couple of neat moments, though they were usually ruined by something else. Read on to find out how! It’s Henrik Sedin’s Year in Review.

This was a considerably harder choice than it was for Daniel, who seemed to have no shortage of big moments in 2015-16.This was clearly Daniel’s year. Henrik on the other hand seemed to have his big moments overshadowed.

He scored five points in a game for the first time in his career, and against their former rivals, the Blackhawks. Unfortunately for Henrik, that was overshadowed by by Daniel scoring a hat-trick which was in turn overshadowed by the fact that the fans didn’t throw any hats on the ice.

There was also the game in which Henrik broke Trevor Linden’s record for most games played in a Canucks uniform. Then that was overshadowed by the fact that the Canucks were absolutely brutal and got slaughtered on home ice by an aggressively bad Toronto Maple Leafs team, which was in turn overshadowed by the webcast which aired Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson lambasting Willie Desjardins’ player deployment. Good times.

Instead of any of those dull and dreary moments, we’ll go with this one. It seems natural that the best moments of the season for Henrik shouldn’t have anything to do with playing games with the Canucks. Rather, he gets to team up with his brother and put on a go-pro show that involves making some other skaters a very bad goalie look foolish.

Just look at all that smiling. Did you see smiling during Canucks games? I didn’t think so.

Henrik, being identical both anatomically and statistically to Daniel, has long been a possession driver. Rarely before Desjardins took over behind the bench were the twins under 55 per cent in Corsi-for, let alone under 50 per cent. This season, they slipped into the red zone, they the team was still better with them on the ice than off.

Henrik doesn’t shoot a lot. We all know this. Honestly, why did I even bother putting a section on shooting? Because my obsessive-compulsive nature forces me to make series posts having consistent layouts, that’s why.

55 points is not great for Henrik. It’s one of his worst non-lockout point totals in the last decade. Luckily, the Torts season snuck in there and, like the ugly friend who makes the plain friend look good by comparison, suddenly 55 points doesn’t look quite as bad.

There’s also the fact that we know Henrik was devastated by a variety of injuries throughout the season. He was still on a point-per-game pace nearly halfway through the year before the wheels fell off. He took some nasty hits from Brayden McNabb, Mikhail Grabovski, and Brent Burns that knocked him out of games, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is still somehow Duncan Keith’s fault. Twin transference or something.

Unlike Daniel, the thug, Henrik did not throw very hits this season at all. He didn’t even make it to double digits. He did however receive plenty of hits, including a variety of “colourful” ones, such as the following:

Henrik Sedin spent most of the remainder of the regular season as a crumpled wreck, though he still put up respectable point totals just about up until the Canucks were mathematically eliminated.

As Nation Overlord Thomas Drance pointed out at the end of the season, one highly reliable method of analyzing centreman for undisclosed injuries is looking at their faceoff percentage, and Henrik’s numbers in the faceoff circle paint a pretty clear picture.

A reliable man on the draw throughout his career, Henrik started as one of the Canucks’ best faceoff men. Of course, he had help at the start of the season, with Brandon Sutter protecting him on weak side draws. Once Sutter went down with injury, not only was he unable to help Henrik on certain draws (this was mostly limited to power plays draws at this point with Sutter having moved off the top line), but it left the Canucks without arguably their best faceoff man, causing Henrik to have to take far more draws in less convenient situations.

This inconvenience turned to downright disaster as injury problems mounted for Henrik. Be it back problems, hip problems, shoulder problems, or a broken finger, at nearly every point in the season, Henrik was playing through some type of injury, and his faceoff ability suffered. It culminated on boxing day, the game in which Henrik was notoriously unable to sit down on the bench between shifts.

During that game, Daniel had to take seven faceoffs, of which he lost seven. (Side note: Daniel is terrible at faceoffs). This happened a smattering of other times throughout the year as the Canuck captain was unable to take faceoffs from time to time.

Go back and check out some of the things we pondered about Daniel, since a bunch of them had to do with both twins.

Henrik had a tough year. He spent most of it injured, while pretending he wasn’t. He frequently took a backseat to his brother, who had a relatively fantastic year scoring goals, thugging it up, calling out rookies, and playing while bleeding profusely. Henrik played second fiddle to Daniel this time around, and that was probably fine for a man who struggled just to bend his body at times.

The Sedins don’t seem to be slowing down at all – so long as they’re healthy. There is a legitimate concern however that they will become more susceptible to injuries as they head into their late 30’s. This is a logical notion, many players stick hanging around at that age tend to have trouble sticking around for all 82 games. What the Sedins probably need to do is give Jaromir Jagr a call and find out what the hell he’s been doing to stave off the aging process (mullets, I’m guessing. The Sedins need mullets).

Unfortunately, as is often the case, we’ll have to wait until next year to see how the twins learn to deal with injuries as they get long in the tooth. I hope they figure out something. I’m not ready to give up Sedinery yet. It’s basically all we’ve got.