The Sedins

The Vancouver Canucks have on their hockey team a set of ginger-haired twins: Daniel and Henrik Sedin. These two Swedes play on the first line, and any player lucky enough to play with them scores goals - lots of them. Henrik is the leading scorer in the NHL, and if Daniel had not broken his foot, he would be right there with him. The Sedins play a passing game, cycling the puck from player to player very quickly. Those without the puck dart into open spaces to receive a blind pass, and then deliver it just as quickly to someone else. Other sports like soccer and basketball will see this (I am thinking of Arsenal and the Suns, in particular), but no other sport does it at hockey's blinding speed. The level of communication between the twins is sometimes eery. How on earth did Henrik know Daniel was going to sprint just at that point in time and into that space? The Sedins' style of play makes hockey a fun sport to watch, and it comes closest to that brilliant Olympic style of play that we were all treated to just a couple of weeks ago.

The Sedins get into a groove that seems to go beyond, or perhaps 'under' conscious thought. It is as if the lightning quick decisions being made by these twins are made at the spinal cord level, rather than in the neo-cortex. As I have said in an earlier post, there is something intrinsically beautiful about sport, and it seems that sport is most beautiful when people are able to connect with each other on such a deep and primal level. It really seems like the Sedins have tapped into an extra sensory perception. Of course, some of this may have to do with the fact that they are identical twins.











I think I may have experienced something like it once in my life, when I played on a three person Ultimate frisbee team during a 3-month long archaeological field season in Jordan in 2002. The entire dig team was about 40 people or so, of which at least 16 people played ultimate frisbee nearly every day. We all got very good after a while. However, if not too many people were playing on any given day,and even though we tried generally to even out the teams, nevertheless sometimes Natalie Brodie, Matt Prince, and I would challenge everyone else there. There was something in the chemistry: it did not matter how many people we played against, we would always score. We three seemed to sense where the others were, and for some reason, we were able to elevate our game so that even in double or triple coverage, we would be the ones to come down with the frisbee. It was uncanny, and I cannot explain why or how it happened.

The field of neuro-science is on one of those vertical trajectories that we see from time to time in various disciplines (biology and physics are on them now as well). So much more is being learned every day about how the brain works, that it is conceivable that one day there might be an answer as to why and how the Sedins can communicate in the way that they do. Once we know how it is done, perhaps the next step might be in harnessing and nurturing such innate abilities. At that point, sport will go through a Rennaissance.