VANCOUVER — It wasn’t the prestige and lustre of the title that led Henrik and Daniel Sedin to become co-presidents of the Vancouver Canucks, but the message that came with the job offer.
“It’s the vision that we want to follow, something that we can really buy into,” Henrik said Tuesday of the Canucks’ commitment to rebuild. “If you had to fight that battle first (to get a rebuild), then there's no way we would have stepped on. But it was very clear that this was going to be a process of a few years, at least, where we're trying to build something good. That's No. 1.”
The message to the Sedins came in a phone call from Francesco Aquilini and later in a meeting with the managing owner’s family.
It wasn’t until departing president Jim Rutherford told reporters at a May 6 press conference that he planned to step back into an advisory role after the National Hockey League draft in June, that the Sedins were seriously approached about taking over hockey operations.
But the bigger surprise must have been ownership’s embrace of a rebuild, something the Sedins had long believed was necessary but saw little appetite for during 26 years on or near the team, the last five years as advisors to former general manager Jim Benning and player-development coaches under Rutherford and ex-GM Patrik Allvin.
When this disastrous season ended with Rutherford firing Allvin in April and hinting at his own imminent retreat from power, the Sedins weren’t even sure they’d be back.
But having witnessed the Canucks’ competitive collapse, enabled by an erosion of dressing-room standards and culture that the Sedins built as Hall of Fame players, the twins leaped at the opportunity to oversee the reconstruction.
“This happened really quickly,” Henrik said. “Nothing happened until the season ended and Jim decided to step down. So what was that, four weeks ago? The timing was right there around the draft lottery. I don't know if Jim had talked to the owners before that, but it was right around there.
“After Jim decided to take a step back, I think they were already ready to do (a rebuild) but we had a meeting and they told us that they want to do it the right way. They were tired of missing the playoffs year after year while at the same time trying to win. They wanted to have a fresh start and build from the ground up and put the care back into the crest, where you get players that are proud to play for the city, and have this city and team be a place where players want to play again.
“When you step into that role, it's less stressful on a daily basis to try to win tomorrow. You try to do everything the right way, which in a way is hard, but there is a plan that you try to follow, which for me makes it a little bit easier. We believe in the plan and we think it's doable if you do it the right way.”
Sedin said events this month transpired so quickly, they didn’t even speak with friend and former teammate Trevor Linden, who famously clashed with the owners in 2018 and left the Canucks after four years as president, before taking his old job.
“We talked to him about it afterwards,” Henrik said. “This (rebuild) was a plan that was put in front of us, and I believe that it’s a different plan than when Trevor took over. But for sure he’s happy for us, and reached out, and congratulated us. We talk regularly to Trevor, and I'm sure we're going to talk more in the future.”
The Sedins’ own commitment is at least a little surprising because when they rejoined the Canucks in 2021, after a self-imposed three-year break to spend time with their families following their retirement as players, there was no grand plan to work their way up through management and eventually run the Canucks or another NHL organization.
Their desire was simply to give back to the only NHL team they ever played for, help where they could, and eventually move back to Sweden when their kids — Henrik has two sons, Daniel two daughters and a son — finished school in Vancouver.
“Our plan has always been to go back to Sweden at least for a year to try to see if it works there or not,” Henrik said. “But we’ve spent 27 years now in the city, and our kids feel like home here. I think that they feel very much like Vancouverites and not Swedish in that way. So there's no set plan for us going forward. Again, I'm not going to speak for them, but I think our kids might end up on this side of the Atlantic.
“We still have kids in school, so our plan was to spend at least the next three, four or five years here, anyway. And we always said that Canucks are part of us, and we want to work for the organization. So we thought that we could take this on. That’s why we did it.”
Henrik’s older son, Valter, who is 19 and plays soccer professionally in Sweden after graduating from the Vancouver Whitecaps academy, has played internationally for Canada at the Under-18 level and has just been named to the Canadian U-20 team.
The youngest of the five Sedin children, Daniel’s daughter, Anna, is 15.
With Henrik and Daniel spending 17 seasons together as Canuck linemates, family has always overlapped their professional and personal lives.
The 45-year-old twins have some perspective on the benefits and challenges of working with family, which is why Henrik — emphasizing he was speaking only hypothetically — said he would have no problem if general manager Ryan Johnson and Canuck scouts want to draft Caleb Malhotra in June, even if Manny Malhotra is coaching the team.
Sedin declined Tuesday to discuss ongoing discussions about the team’s vacant head coaching job, which is expected to go to Malhotra, the Canucks’ minor-league coach who has a strong relationship with Johnson and the twins. Henrik said only that there is a “process” the team is going through.
But regarding the idea that father and son could be on the Canucks next season, he said: “I don't think it's an issue. You can't disqualify a player that you really like at that spot just because — and I'm talking theoretically here — because his dad might be the coach. That would be wrong for everyone, and that would be wrong for our organization. So, if Caleb is there and our scouts really love him, then that's a non-issue.”
Could there be a Malhotra parallel for what the Sedins experienced in the NHL?
“Yes and no,” Henrik said. “We were brothers, so it was a little bit different that way. But there were coaches who split us up, and everyone knows how much we enjoyed playing together. There's always going to be cases (within a team) where you think things should be different. But as long as there's some integrity and you do things for the right reason, there shouldn't be an issue. We're all adults in this business.”
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