Henrik Sedin shows leadership, helps enhance tanking by missing 2 weeks

That was from Sunday night via our GIF guy Schneider’s Teeth, during the 2nd period of their 4-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres which in essence extended the “they’re still alive!” discussion for another couple of days. 

Unfortunately, that belief – which was really being kept afloat by only the utmost of optimists to begin with – lasted for less than 24 hours. News broke this afternoon that Henrik Sedin will be put on the shelf for ~2 weeks, as per reported by Vancouver Canucks beat reporter TVA Sports’ Renaud Lavoie.

Nail, meet the coffin.. for the final time in 2013-14.

In reality the Canucks would’ve needed the biggest of miracles of all miracles to sneak into the playoff picture over these final couple of weeks. Their odds were 2.8% following last night’s game, and while they’ll still technically remain at that 2.8% even after the announcement of this news, that’s all it is — a technicality.

We hadn’t seen Henrik Sedin fail to suit up for a regular season game in a long time heading into this season, but his ironman streak finally ended at 689 games back in January after the fractured ribs he suffered at the hands of Martin Hanzal became too much to handle. 

With the Captain out of action, anyone that somehow still had their doubts quickly came to the realization that he was easily the team’s most valuable player. What we saw without him down the middle was a disorganized, helter skelter squad that quite frankly looked miserable and lost. 

He essentially missed 10 games leading up to the Olympics (and yes, I’m counting the 2 games he tried to come back and play in, because he was a shell of himself) and during that time the Canucks went 2-8, getting outscored by a 33-19 margin. 

The shame of it all is that he’d actually been playing quite well next to Nicklas Jensen, propping the young prospect forward up and making him unquestionably look far better than he actually is. I’ll be curious to see how Jensen is able to hold up without his blankie (he has spent just 17:03 of his 100+ minutes this year without him). 

But Jensen surely won’t be the only one to struggle without Henrik around, I’d imagine. The Vancouver Canucks as a team will struggle to win any of their remaining 9 games, which isn’t the worst thing in the world. The Devils and Jets are both within striking distance of them in the standings, and it would behoove them to lose a couple of games and increase their chances of landing a useful asset at the draft. 

In the meantime, Canucks games will be a tough watch.. but we’re used to that by now.