Daniel Sedin: Snakebitten no more

When the term “Miracle on Ice” gets mentioned, you’ve been conditioned to think of the US national team upsetting the powerhouse Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics. At least that was the case prior to Wednesday February 19th, 2014. Sometime around 1:30 AM PST the most unforeseen, unrealistic, and unimaginable of events took place as you slept. 

Daniel Sedin scored a goal. I assure you that this isn’t part of some elaborate and cruel dream state that you’re still in. I have video evidence to prove it just past the jump.

If you haven’t been following the Vancouver Canucks all that closely this season you’re probably wondering why this is such a big deal. Daniel Sedin, after all, is a not-so-distant Art Ross winner who has 300+ career goals in the NHL. He has made lots and lots of dollars over the years thanks to his knack for putting the puck into the net.

This season has certainly proven to be a challenge for him, though. His extended scoring woes have been something of an elephant in the room, as they’ve persisted long enough that they’re probably more a sign of the changing of the times than some sort of blip in the radar.

Yet still, while Daniel will probably be hard-pressed to be a 30-goal scorer again at any point, you’d have to figure that he’s still surely better on that front than he has shown this season. Due to a combination of an injury to his brother, and just some putrid luck in general, Daniel Sedin is currently on pace to score just 17-18 goals this season. 

Here’s a truly mind-boggling stat for you to chew on: heading into Wednesday’s quarter final matchup against Slovenia, Daniel Sedin had failed to legitimately see the puck go from his stick to the back of the net in the past 25 games he had suited up for. He got credit for a goal against the Flyers on December 30th during that drought, but it was far more of a Steve Mason-induced comedy of errors than anything he actually did himself.

But then this happened:

As you can see, he winds up falling down following the goal.. presumably caused by that ginormous monkey jumping off of his back (which you can almost see if you view this video frame-by-frame). It’s the understatement of all understatements to say that “he was due”, but he really was. He just missed on a couple of glorious opportunities earlier in the game (including this odd play where he appears to pass the puck to Henrik Sedin’s ghost!), and had already registered 3 assists in the team’s 3 preliminary round games leading up to this contest.

For what it’s worth it was this goal that made the score 2-0 for Sweden in the 3rd period, and really seemed to crush any hopes Slovenia may’ve had of pulling off an upset. They went on to bury a few more en route to a 5-0 victory, and await the winner of Russia/Finland in a semi final matchup set to be played on Friday. 

One of the big reasons they’ll be in a position to do so is the play of that makeshift top line constituted of Sedin, Loui Eriksson, and Nicklas Backstrom. They were the team’s best line against Slovenia, and will need to continue to play that way if Tre Kronor have any shot of overcoming their laundry list of injuries.

I’d like to think that we won’t have to wait another 25 games to see his next goal.