It was mid-June 1999, the Stanley Cup play-offs had just finished and there was still two weeks till the NHL Entry Draft on June 26, 1999. There really hadn't been much hope during the 1998-99 season. The Canucks had gone 23-47-12. Mike Keenan had pretty much decimated the Canucks locker room and had created so much dissension that Canuck fans didn't know what was going to happen during the off-season and we weren't hoping for much either. It seemed as though the hockey gods were completely against us. At that point in terms of prospects for the NHL Entry Draft, we were picking third, which meant that the Canucks would be able to pick one of the Sedin twins while watching the other ride off into the sunset. It seemed as though we were faced with the idea of picking either Daniel or Henrik; not both. I had just turned twenty-nine that year - still single; I had no idea that in a few months I'd meet online; the woman that would change my life.
But two weeks later, at the NHL Entry Draft, Brian Burke pulled off a miracle. He'd somehow managed to snag the #1 and 3 pick at one point - where it became a Patrick Stefan and Henrik Sedin possibility and then managed to flip it so that the Canucks picked #2 and #3...whereupon the Canucks took Daniel Sedin and Henrik Sedin. NHL Entry Draft Trades It was absolute magic.
When the Sedin twins came over to Vancouver, they were still practically babies, with baby fat and a look of utter confusion on their faces as they took in the sights of Vancouver. They were eighteen but it seemed as though they were far younger; looking back from a gap of ten years and my having had a career at the time. They were fresh from their junior years with their hockey club in Modo and to me, from the vantage point of being 10 years older, they were just fledglings in life.
But over the years, these baby-faced young rookies turned into experienced NHL leaders and men; husbands and fathers, as I watched their careers, my life had gone from being a single man to a husband and a father. I saw their highs...the Stanley Cup run in 2011 where they came within a game of winning it all and the lows: the crushing defeat in Game 7 at the hands of the Boston Bruins led by former Vancouver Giant Milan Lucic in our own arena. I watched as the twins had watched, in shock and horror, as fans rioted, as they did after the Game 7 in 1994 in an entitled fit of anger. I watched the post-Stanley Cup careers of the twins and as they realized that their one shot at the Stanley Cup was all that they would have, they had no more in their tank. But they soldiered on, leading by example, doing the work in the corners of the rink, digging the puck out, showing the rookies year by year that you have to get dirty and do the work if you want to be a successful hockey player and get the ice time.
Now eighteen years later, and seventeen seasons, the Sedins are calling it a career; they plan to stay in Vancouver - they say that Vancouver is their home; that the city welcomed them with open arms and that is where they want to stay and as they hang up their #22 and #33 jerseys, they join our ranks as fans of the team that they formerly played for. The Sedins from Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, are Vancouverites in their adopted home. We were blessed to have them as Captain #33 Henrik and Assistant Captain #22 Daniel of our Vancouver Canucks. They are consummate statemen and ambassadors of hockey, the epitome of class - they could have had a chance to win a Stanley Cup anywhere but they chose to finish up their careers without one, electing to finish out their storied careers with the team that took a chance on the both of them 18 years earlier.
For me, I have also changed from the young man I was in 1999 when the Sedins were drafted into the NHL. As I watched the Sedins careers and personal lives develop, my own life changed as well; the young woman from Lousiana I met in October of 1999 is now my wife of seventeen years and counting; she is a die-hard Canucks fan. My oldest kid is a teenager looking at a potential Junior B career in hockey. Hockey has always been an integral part of my life, as a Canucks fan and as a hockey dad/hockey photog. The Sedins will always be a part of my life too as the memories of their career here fill my mind and I realize that I will probably never see their like in Canuck colors ever again, at least not in my lifetime.
So, Daniel, Henrik, you turned this franchise around from its darkest days and made memories on the ice that we all share. I am supremely grateful that you chose to play out your careers here in Vancouver, that you gave us eighteen years of hope and joy for our hockey club. You gave your all in Vancouver and you chose to make Vancouver your adopted home; to raise your families here and be Vancouverites, just as we all are. You truly are a part of Vancouver, an integral part.
Tack så mycket, Henrik and Daniel. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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