The Sedins are a big blindspot for the HOH board which typically has pretty good, nuanced perspectives.
The Sedins played hockey in a way that a lot of people didn't really understand what they were seeing and I suspect they probably attributed a lot of the Sedins' success to their own team's failures. Like, everyone understands why you don't stop Lindros, or slow down McDavid.
But the Sedins would basically play really skillful soccer on ice. Lot's of little through-passes, lot's of turning the back on defenders and waiting for them to overcommit just a hair, only to turn around and hit the open man. I suspect a lot of opposing fans thought, 'our stupid D, how is that guy uncovered', but the Sedins would basically find a way to press every single part of your skin in a way that felt unthreatening, before suddenly they found a pressure point and somehow they have your wrist bent backwards and you're on your knees yelping.
Time and the Canucks organization did them no favours in a couple of senses.
Time:
1. The Sedins entered their period of effectiveness (and understanding what NHL fitness meant) juuuuuuuust as the westcoast express was leaving it's heyday and becoming dysfunctional.
You put the 09 Sedins with the 03 Naslund line and that team probably wins a cup even with Dan Cloutier in net. But the Sedins weren't ready until the team lost a lot of its jam.
The Sedins also juuuuust missed playing with Pettersson and Hughes by a couple of years. So there's some timeline stuff here.
2. The Sedins were such possession monsters, and so poorly supported by other strong players, that often our coach (e.g. Vigneault) would just put them out there with our substandard 3rd pairing D because the play would so frequently be in the offensive zone that it was a way of protecting our bad D (like Marc-Andre Gragnani for example). So their superlative puck possession style wasn't so much supported by other stars, as it was used to lift up weaker linemates/d pairings.
3. The Sedins gave their linemates the most priceless resource in the NHL: time.
The league (and several leagues below) are full of players who can do superlative things with the puck, and have amazing shots, if you can just give them the space and time to process the game and put those skills to use. But the NHL is so organized, and full of such strong defenders that that time just doesn't exist. It's part of why drafting has always been a bit of a crapshoot (not a crapshoot, but high profile guys fail to make it all the time), because processing speed is hard to predict until you see it.
The Sedins were so good at creating space for teammates that they made Alex Burrows a 35 goal scorer, made Anson carter a 30 goal scorer about 60 games before he was out of the league, made Taylor Pyatt a 20 goal scorer, broke Radim Vrbata's gypsy curse of only being able to score in Phoenix, etc.
I think Boeser's expectations actually got outsized from his rookie season partly because we were given the impression that he was a sort of Patrick Laine shooter who could blow the puck past a set goaltender. And in his rookie season he was.
But he had Thomas Vanek at even strength, and the Sedins on the powerplay setting him up so he could finish his coffee, get the puck, take a look, and lean right into it.
Then they retired, Vanek left, and suddenly Boeser didn't have that time anymore.
He's still a good player and I was always a believer, but he took a lot of shit from our fans because suddenly he couldn't find the time and space that the Sedins helped create for him.
Here's an example:
I was at this game with my dad and it was a special moment and it made Boeser look like Mike Bossy or something. Taking on one of the best goalies in the NHL in a mano-a-mano scenario and beating him.
But look at why he had that time? That was what the Sedins did.
If you replaced Datsyuk and Zetterberg with the Sedins that Wings team still wins cups, I firmly believe it.
But because they played a style that not a lot of people understood, and because they played out west and in Canada, they get a bad rap.