Vancouver Canucks: World Cup not Worth the Risk for Sedins
The Vancouver Canucks need the Sedin twins in the lineup for the team to be successful, and the World Cup could put that in jeopardy.
Vancouver Canucks fans had to like what they saw when Loui Eriksson lined up with the Sedin twins for Team Sweden’s first pre-tournament game at the World Cup of Hockey.
The trio, which will be the Canucks first line, combined for Sweden’s first goal and added three shots on goal in 20 minutes of ice time against Finland. There is a benefit to this as the threesome will get a chance to gel and build chemistry against players they will actually be playing against instead of the minor leaguers and depth players they would play against in pre-season.
However, that benefit could come at a cost.
On Day 1 of pre-tournament action, Czech forward Vladimir Sobotka and Team Europe forward Marian Hossa both left their respective games due to injury.
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It’s not just injury during the tournament that the Canucks will have to worry about though. Despite continuing to perform at a high level, the Sedins are starting to show the wear and tear of playing 82 games a season plus playoffs for 15 NHL seasons. Their bodies can simply no longer handle the stress of playing at their high level of hockey and they have broken down in the latter half of the last two seasons.
Usually, the Sedins get an opportunity to ease their way in to the season as they usually only get in to a few pre-season games. This year, the Sedins will instead be relied upon to lead Sweden to a World Cup and could be playing an additional 10 games of high-level hockey depending on how Sweden finishes in the tournament. They will face punishing hits from the likes of Shea Weber, Dustin Byfuglien and Zdeno Chara.
That could mean instead of breaking down in March or April, the Sedins could start to miss time in January or Feburary, which would throw a huge wrench in the Canucks’ plans of competing for a playoff spot after a disappointing year last year.
Is the benefit of having the Sedins and Eriksson gelling when the puck drops on October 15 really worth the risk of the Sedins breaking down sooner than usual? Even Henrik Sedin, himself a two-time Olympian and representative of Sweden at five IIHF World Championships, didn’t seem excited about playing in the World Cup.
There are times where the reward outweighs the risk, and although it was fun to see the immediate chemistry the Sedin twins had with Eriksson, this just isn’t one of those times.
The twins should be in Vancouver right now getting ready to head up to Whistler in two weeks, and they should be taking advantage of a well-deserved opportunity to get the rust off and ease in to the season. Instead they will be representing Sweden at a tournament in Toronto that nobody really cares about. It’s hard to see the reward in that.
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