John Scott’s story heading into the All-Star Game set the stage. His affability during the skills competition got everyone on his side. Then he scored on his first shift. Then he knocked Patrick Kane on his rear end with the ever-rare All-Star Game body check.
Once Scott scored his second goal, roofing a shot past Devan Dubnyk on a breakaway, the narrative was impossible to resist. To top it off, he captained the Pacific Division to victory. Was it any surprise the Nashville crowd chanted “MVP, MVP, MVP!” when Scott hit the ice?
John Scott was the story of All-Star weekend and rightfully so. Meanwhile, Daniel Sedin quietly went about his business, never out-shining anyone. He was the best player on the ice and the quiet, unassuming, unsung hero of the All-Star tournament.
Daniel led the mini-tournament in scoring, tallying 2 goals and 4 points. His teammate Brent Burns also managed 4 points, all assists, but that was clearly just so Daniel didn’t draw any attention to himself for his prolific point-scoring.
The moment that typified his game wasn’t even one of his points. It was when he received the puck all alone in front of the net with only Roberto Luongo to beat. Instead of trying to pull a move that might give himself the glory, he simply waited and waited and waited, finally setting up Drew Doughty for a scoring chance. It’s the Sedin way.
Sure, Daniel scored one of the nicest goals of the mini-tournament, ringing a perfectly-placed puck off the post and past Dubnyk, but he made sure only to score off a gorgeous stretch pass by goaltender John Gibson so that he didn’t get too much credit.
And of course his second goal stood up as the game winner over the heavily-favoured Central Division, but do you think Daniel’s going to draw attention to that fact? Of course not.
Then, in the final against the Atlantic, who do you think taught the Pacific team the defensive style that kept the game scoreless for so long? It was Daniel, the veteran, the guy who literally said that the Canucks need to play 3-on-3 like a penalty kill.
But when the Pacific needed a goal, guess who stepped up? It was Daniel making the defensive play on P.K. Subban at one end of the ice (perhaps with a hook that would have been penalized outside of the All-Star Game), and it was Daniel setting up Perry for the lone goal.
In the final minutes, when the Pacific needed to defend the one-goal lead, who did they send out for the all-important defensive zone faceoff? Daniel Sedin.
Yes, he lost the faceoff and every other faceoff he took, because he's bad at faceoffs, but he still had the trust of his coach, country singer Chris Young. Probably because he was the second oldest skater on the ice, behind only Jaromir Jagr.
The Pacific held onto the lead—thanks in large part to Daniel Sedin’s veteran presence on the ice in those crucial final moments—and won the $1 million prize. Just like all the attention and glory he deserved during the All-Star weekend, Daniel deflected his shared of the prize money too, having already pledged to donate it to charity through the Twitter account of the Sedin Family Foundation.
But that tweet was far too self-aggrandizing, so it has of course been deleted.
Is it any surprise that Daniel Sedin quietly carried the underdog, laughing-stock Pacific Division squad to victory? Of course not. He’s been doing that all season long.
So, while he wouldn’t want the attention, we’ll give him the unsung hero award for the All-Star tournament anyways. Don’t tell him about it though. He’ll just try to give it to Jannik Hansen.
