Have the Sedin Twins, Vancouver Canucks Rekindled the Magic in 2014-15?

It would be a mistake to read too much into the hot start the Sedin twins are having with new linemate Radim Vrbata in Vancouver. As a general rule, any happenings over such a short span of time should be taken with a heavy dose of salt.

Still, looking at the numbers it’s hard not to be encouraged. Daniel Sedin’s eight points on the year represent a big uptick from the last half of 2013-14, when he didn’t manage that much production over the entire months of February, March and April.

The improvement in Henrik Sedin’s game is almost as impressive; not only is his point production up, but his two goals through five games represent as many as he scored in the entire post-Christmas portion of last season.

However, there are some good reasons to be cautious.  

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A year ago, in what would be the duo’s worst season in a decade, things started rather well. Daniel Sedin had two goals and six points in his first four games; Henrik Sedin managed six assists in the same span. The Canucks won three of those four games to get off to a strong start under new head coach John Tortorella. It was only later that everything went off the rails.

It’s also a little early to say that this is the dawn of a new day for the Canucks. True, the team owns a winning record at 3-2, but the three wins came over Alberta teams. And in the two games Vancouver has played against likely playoff clubs (Dallas Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning) it’s gone 0-2 and been outscored 10-5.

Further, the wins over the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers weren’t exactly landslides; there were two one-goal regulation wins (the Canucks added an empty-netter in each case) and a shootout victory. The team’s going to need to do a lot more than squeak out wins against bottom-feeders if it wants to secure a playoff berth.

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Those empty-net goals, incidentally, have been a big part of the reason the Sedins’ counting numbers have been so impressive in the early going; in each case it was a Sedin who picked up the goal, meaning that of the pair’s trio of goals only one of them actually came against a goalie.

Of the 21 combined points collected by the line through five games, four of them disappear if we eliminate points assessed for empty-net production. As of this writing, Vancouver was the only team in the NHL with two empty-net goals, so it’s safe to say that the Sedin line has had its totals boosted by the empty net more in the early going than any other line in the league.

But once we get past the caveats, however, there are some real reasons for optimism. For example, while the Canucks struggled against the Stars and the Lightning, the Sedin line was actually playing some extremely good hockey:

Player	Corsi+	Corsi-	Corsi%
Daniel Sedin	49	13	79.0%
Henrik Sedin	49	13	79.0%
Radim Vrbata	42	11	79.2%

For those unfamiliar, Corsi percentage is shorthand for shot attempts for and against while a player is on the ice at even strength.

Here it indicates that in these two games, when the Sedin line was on the ice and a shot was fired at the net four out of five times, it was a Canuck taking the shot. The line only finished even in the goals department (two for, two against), but over the long haul that kind of dominant puck possession pays off.

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And it’s not like this is a one-time thing. Even excluding empty-net situations, the Sedins have been dominant in terms of both Corsi and goals; in four out of five games they’ve led the Canucks in the shot-attempts category by a wide margin.

The lone exception was Vancouver’s first game against Calgary, where the Flames coaching staff had some success matching the terrific (and underrated) defence pairing of Mark Giordano and T.J. Brodie up against the Sedins.

On balance, with the Sedin twins on the ice at evens, so far this season Vancouver is taking 60 percent of all shot attempts and scoring two-thirds of all goals. Some of that is shooting percentage related—the Sedins were snake-bitten last year—but the line is also doing a better job of puck possession than it did last year.

To answer the question posed in the headline: It’s premature to say whether things have truly turned for the Canucks and their top line; not only are we still in the early days of 2014-15, but there are some red flags in the data. What we can say for sure is that Vrbata and the Sedins have started very well, and that if they keep up their current level of play they’ll be one of the very best three-man forward units in the entire league.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work. Statistics via war-on-ice.com, naturalstattrick.com and NHL.com.