Daniel Sedin accomplished a lot in his hockey career. He won an Art Ross Trophy, the Ted Lindsay Award, an Olympic gold medal, and was a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
But there’s one thing he really wishes he had done much earlier.
Daniel appeared on Gino Reda’s Overtime Hockey podcast this past week. When asked if he could go back in time and give his younger self a piece of advice, Daniel didn’t hesitate.
“Get in the gym and start working out sooner,” he said. “We played soccer until we were probably 15, so we were a little bit behind physically when we came over here.”
The Sedins were criticized early in their careers for being “too soft.” Canucks general manager Brian Burke didn’t want to draft them at all after watching them in the World Junior Championship because he thought they were too easy to knock off the puck.
“I joked to our scouts that they spent more time on the ice surface than the Zamboni,” said Burke in his book, Burke’s Law. “It was hard to imagine them being impact players in the NHL.”
Burke was convinced to give them another shot by then-scout Thomas Gradin, and the rest is history, but it’s interesting to hear Daniel himself say that he wishes he had bulked up more at a younger age. The Sedins eventually became the fittest players on the Canucks, with excellent lower-body and core strength that made them puck-protection machines.
But Daniel also saw the bright side of those early struggles in the NHL.
“Those early years, having to go through those tough times, we learned a lot about ourselves,” said Daniel, “and we learned a lot about how to deal with going through tough times.”
Daniel also gave a lot of credit to Marc Crawford, crediting him as the coach from whom he learned the most.
“Marc was such an important part of our careers,” said Daniel. “The way he coached us and pushed us and made us believe that we could be the players that we became. Obviously, there were some tough times, but I don’t have enough good things to say about Marc and how he pushed us.”
While Crawford was the most influential coach for the Sedins, Daniel pointed to another Swede as the player who had the biggest impact on his career.
“Alex Edler,” said Daniel. “Obviously, he was younger than us, and I would like to think we supported him a little bit early on, but since then, we were such good friends, and we relied on him a lot.”