The Twins

©2011 Peter Diamond

Yes, it’s another hockey drawing. With the Stanley Cup playoffs ramping up and my Vancouver Canucks doing better than they have since I was 12, and in following Marshall Arisman‘s famous advice to ‘draw what you know’, I’ve been taking the time to put a little bit of my favorite game into some illustrations.

Henrik and Daniel Sedin, more fondly known as Hank and Dank. are twin brothers from Sweden playing on the same Vancouver line. They have developed a nearly-psychic kind of Jedi teamwork on the ice that only brothers with identical DNA could manage, and it has resulted in their unprecedented domination of the scoreboards in the NHL. Unfortunately, they were slumping early in this year’s playoffs.

While the Sedins’ performance at the time I drew this in the 2nd round of the playoffs didn’t really justify their portrayal as headhunters amongst the skewered masks of the defeated goaltenders in their wake, I thought of it as positive visualisation. A little bit of illustrative voodoo if you will. As it happened that night’s game wasn’t quite the Sedin goal-scoring explosion I had hoped for, but Henrik did score the goal that won the Canucks their series against Nashville. Since then the brothers have returned to full form and are working their magic on the San Jose Sharks, one win away from the Canucks’ first appearance in the Stanley Cup finals since 1994.

To up the superstitious anty on this year’s playoffs, a member of the Canucks’ official messageboard CDC observed that last night’s victory over the Sharks – in which the brothers combined for 7 points – came the day after the Zodiac turned to Gemini, the sign of the Twins.

The Sedins themselves are in fact Libras, and I don’t really believe in such things anyway. But it does add yet another delightful bit of superstitious drama to a game already riddled with the stuff.  The strange little personal routines and superstitions of the players and fans are one of my favorite points in the sport, and I chose to make one of my own with this image.