Nucks 4, Hawks 0: Sedins Crush Chicago

Fear not Vancouver fans. The Alex Burrows slump is over. A game after being held goal-less against the Avalanche Alex Burrows returned to form against Chicago. Of course he had some help from his linemates too. The Sedins dominated the proceeding. The Sedin, Sedin, Burrows line combined for 9 points on the night. Daniel Sedin hit thirty goals with a pair and his brother Henrik did what he does best, adding three assists. Daniel and Henrik both now have legitimate shots to beat their career high totals in points. Daniel needs 8 in the last 7 games to tie and Henrik needs 6. Just for the record, Daniel remains three points ahead of Henrik in career points. Meanwhile there is really no point mentioning career highs for Alex Burrows since he’s already set everything. Actually that’s not true. After last night Burrows now has a new career high in assists.

The game was complete and utter Vancouver dominance. Or maybe it just felt that way with the Sedins. They struck early on a classic bang bang play in close. Henrik found Daniel alone three feet from the net. Next it was a brilliant Daniel Sedin slap pass for Burrows who made no mistake from in close with a superb deflection for his 26th goal of the season. With the goal, Burrows kept alive his drive towards thirty goals. Finally, Daniel scored a candidate for goal of the season. Burrows found Henrik alone in the slot. Though all Canucks fans knew he would never shoot, the Chicago players clearly did not and as they rushed to check him between the circles, Henrik whirled and through a blind pass to Daniel who stood unguarded at the side of the net. Looking at perhaps an inch (and it was a small inch) of net given the angle, Daniel one timed the puck home. The goal left John Garett in the Sportsnet booth muttering “wow” with the voice of a man who really couldn’t believe what he had just seen. Down on the players bench, you could actually see the little green dollar signs glittering in the twins’ eyes.

At this point if anyone is questioning the value of the Sedins, lets just review who is in front of Daniel in the Western “we actually play defence here” Conference scoring race. Datsysuk, Iginla, Getzlaf, Thornton. That’s it. Both Sedins have more points than players like Nash, Heatly, Spezza, Hossa, Zetterburg, and Patrick Marleau. And here’s a stat you didn’t know about the Sedins. They are a career plus +172 collectively. Sign them!!!!

There were two more exciting elements of the game other than the Sedin line dominance. The first was the solid if unspectacular play of Roberto Luongo who picked up his 7th shutout of the season. He did make one particularly huge save of Martin Havlat after the Hawks sniper was allowed to walk out at the side of the goal late in the second period. Luongo stacked the pads and robbed him. The Canuck captain is slowly, very slowly, starting to return to form. The second element was the third period line brawl. After Dustin Byfuglien cross checked Roberto Luongo in the face, chaos erupted. Ben Eager and Kevin Bieksa paired off, with the former landing a nasty punch that had Bieksa bleeding profusely from his nose. Not to be outdone Alex Burrows was challenging everyone and ended up in the middle of a pile. How he avoided a fighting major, and the ensuing Gordie Howe Hat trick, was anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Shane O’brien had to be restrained by officials as he attempted to get to the defence of Daniel Sedin who was being besieged by two Hawk players. We can only hope now that these teams meet in the playoffs. For more reasons than one….

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~ by 5mk35 on March 30, 2009.