It’s been a while since we’ve seen the Sedins look truly happy. It’s been a frustrating season for the twins, who have battled through injuries to be the Canucks lone source of semi-consistent scoring, helping Jannik Hansen to a career year in the process, but find themselves at the bottom of the NHL standings.
But there was once a time when the Sedins smiled and legitimately seemed to find joy in playing hockey. It wasn’t that long ago, either. It was this past summer, when the NHL teamed up with GoPro for a series of, well, GoPro commercials. But they’re pretty fun.
The Sedins already appeared in one of these videos, demonstrating a bit of their stickhandling, chemistry, and competitiveness. This time around, they play a little one-on-one, but finally just end up going 2-on-2 against Mike Johnston and a friend, giving us a first-person-ish view of Sedinery in action.
Daniel’s between-the-legs move to kick things off is slick and some nice foreshadowing for how the video ends. Kudos to the editor.
Then Henrik gets in his office behind the net and gets wonderfully cheeky, leaving the puck behind and tapping both posts to confuse the goaltender before coming out front and roofing a backhand.
At one point, both Sedins just start trying to throw hip checks, which is hilarious both because it shows how competitive they are with each other, but also because they’re not very good at hip checks.
The real fun starts when they go 2-on-2, however, where we get to see some of their patented five-foot saucer passes, a replay of Daniel’s between-the-legs goal against the Flames from 2010, and an awesome slow-motion view of a blind, backhand, saucer-pass from Henrik to Daniel at the backdoor.
The best moment comes at the end. The duo in black, so used to seeing passes, get completely suckered in when Henrik repeats Daniel’s between-the-legs move from the beginning of the video, splitting the defence before beating the, admittedly terrible, goaltender on the backhand.
And then Henrik smiles. It’s beautiful.
