The Canucks website kind of called out the NHL in a very weird way
The Vancouver Canucks are not happy with the way Henrik and Daniel Sedin are treated by the NHL. They have never been happy with it.
By
Adam Gretz
•
4 min read
The Vancouver Canucks website and official Twitter account did a very strange thing Wednesday and kind of called out the NHL for its treatment of Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin.
It all started with the tweet you see below linking to an article published on the team's website written by former player and team TV analyst John Garrett.
Is there a conspiracy to treat Sedins like second-class citizens? Garrett column. FEATURE → https://t.co/rKnMp3qDVb pic.twitter.com/8XnclqOUh6
— Vancouver Canucks (@VanCanucks) January 20, 2016
Asking in a tweet if there is a conspiracy to treat two of the NHL's best players as second-class citizens is a pretty big shot at the league for an official team account. But then you get to Garrett's article and he does not hold back in his criticism of the NHL.
A brief sampling:
In their first four years they took abuse from not only their opponents, but from the media in Vancouver. Not once did they complain or voice their opinion. They would let their game do the talking. The problem became because they played on the west coast and because they never complained, it was easy for the league to turn a blind eye to the physical abuse that the other teams were using to try and shut them down.
He then goes on to list a series questionable hits the Sedins have been on the receiving end of throughout their careers and how those same hits almost never resulted in appropriate punishment from the league. His list includes hits from Paul Byron, Martin Hanzal, Brad Marchand, Duncan Keith and, most recently, New York Islanders forward Mikhail Grabovski for a hit on Henrik during a recent game in Brooklyn. Grabovski was ejected from the game but was not suspended.
Sedin is still sidelined due to an injury as a result of the hit.
Garrett ended his commentary with these sentences.
Are you kidding me?
The league says they are trying to sell their stars, well then treat them like stars not like second-class citizens.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, the Sedins get no respect.
That middle sentence is another strong shot at the NHL. That, again, also appears on the official website of an NHL team.
On one hand, Garrett is an analyst, and the Canucks are simply giving him a different outlet to do what he does during games, which is share his thoughts. And it is not the first time his writings have appeared on their site.
He is also not wrong that the Sedins have taken a lot of unnecessary garbage and criticism during their careers (and they still do). Their toughness is constantly questioned and they take a ton of physical and verbal abuse on (and off) the ice. Dennis Potvin actually called Daniel Sedin a low life during a bizarre, unhinged rant following a recent game.
This kind of stuff goes back to the early stages of their careers, too. When Brian Burke was running the Canucks in the early 2000s he blasted the NHL's officials during a playoff series against Detroit when he said "Sedin is not Swedish for punch me, or headlock me in a scrum."
But you expect that kind of stuff from a team executive in the heat of a playoff series (especially when that team executive is Brian Burke). And I am all for criticizing the NHL for the way it handles dirty hits and the way punishments are handed out by the department of player safety. And with the way the game is officiated and played, it is almost as if the league has done everything it can to minimize the impact of its star players on the ice, while its best players seem to take more criticism than the top stars in other sports.
But this is true for all of them, not just the Sedins. Just look at some of the stuff guys like Alex Ovechkin and Erik Karlsson have had to put up with in their careers. Ovechkin is the best goal scorer of his generation and is only now starting to be truly appreciated for what he's doing. This came after years of being in the crosshairs for over-the-top criticism that knocked him down for every failing his team had, whether it was his fault or not. Karlsson is probably going to win his third Norris Trophy in five years and his accomplishments are treated like a joke ("He's not really a defenseman!").
The NHL does need to do more to promote its stars and let their skill shine. Garrett is right.
It's just strange, and kind of unheard of, to see an article like this coming from a team website and being pushed the way it was when the message from these official channels is usually "everything is great, everything is awesome, look at how great our sport is."
This was definitely not one of those messages.
But I do have my own conspiracy theory on this: This is the Canucks' way of voicing their displeasure over the treatment of their star players, and this is a way for them to do it where nobody gets punished. If general manager Jim Benning or team president Trevor Linden come out and say something critical like that, they're getting fined.
If coach Willie Desjardins speaks out, he's getting fined and his team doesn't get a call for a few games.
But if the color analyst on TV says it on the team website? It's not a great look for them, and everybody kind of laughs about it, but nobody is getting punished.
