VANCOUVER — There’s this idea floating around the West Coast, like a beautiful dream, that when Roberto Luongo walks to centre ice Thursday night at Rogers Arena, instead of the Vancouver Canucks lowering a curtain to unveil his image in the Ring of Honour, his number instead will be raised to the rafters.
The No. 1 jersey being retired would bear the names of both Luongo and Kirk McLean, the two greatest goalies in franchise history. McLean is already in the Ring of Honour.
A first-ballot Hockey Hall-of-Famer, Luongo will be immortalized for his remarkable eight seasons in Vancouver, when one of the best goalies in the National Hockey League won 252 games and took the Canucks to the 2011 Stanley Cup Final — the apex of the most successful era in franchise history.
But, of course, it’s not statistics that have made Luongo such a beloved figure, but his rise and fall with the Canucks.
At his most dominant, Luongo was admired but not adored in Vancouver. He was regarded by some as a diva who called his own shots and kept a shield between himself and reporters and fans. But in despair, after he was dislodged as starter and asked for a trade, Luongo showed himself to be as vulnerable and fallible as the rest of us. During a comical and painful two-year trade mission, the goalie from Montreal displayed humility and self-deprecating humour. He became relatable and loved.
To plumb Luongo’s character and full impact on the Canucks, from the time of his 2006 trade from the Florida Panthers to his 2014 return to South Florida, we interviewed a half-dozen of his former teammates.
This is the Story of Lou, as witnessed by Cory Schneider, Dan Hamhuis, Chris Higgins, Jannik Hansen and Henrik and Daniel Sedin.
Acquiring Luongo changed everything for the Canucks.
Henrik: After the first couple of days of training camp, I think the feeling within the team just changed. We knew we were going to have a chance to win every night, even if we didn’t play our best. That’s a nice feeling to have when you go out for a game.
Higgins: With all the great players, they just have ‘the look.’ When you see Lou on game day, it’s a different person. He’s just dialed in all day. All those top players, they just look different when it’s competition time. You can see it in their eyes, and how bad they want it. I think a lot of guys on our team had it. But coming from our starting goaltender just gave us confidence.
Daniel: He was obviously a great goalie. But the feeling in the locker room, how he competed in practice, how he dealt with pressure, how he was before games, he was a winner. He would do anything it took to be a winner, and I think it pushed everyone to get better.
Henrik: I mean, he was built perfectly to be a good goalie. He was athletic, he worked extremely hard, technically he was very good, and it was no secret how competitive he was. He had all the ingredients.
Luongo was never a diva in the dressing room.
Hansen: Behind closed doors, he was chatty, he was funny. That was probably the most well-guarded secret about him that people from outside the dressing room didn’t know. We saw him like that all the time.
Henrik: He was one of our best teammates throughout our career. Just the way he was as a person, on road trips, he was such a great guy — and then how much he meant to our team, just the way he practised. I think he took a lot of blame. I don’t know if it’s because what people thought of him or because he was a goalie and well-paid. I’m not sure, but very seldom did he deserve it.
Hansen: It wasn’t just his fault when we were losing, but a lot of the blame fell on him from media, fans especially. It’s one of those things, Vancouver, they’re very, very hard on their stars and they can take them for granted when they’re here. When we were playing with Hank and Danny, we were getting critiqued while we were putting up banners. Like, just wait till these guys are gone; you won’t know what you had.
Daniel: It was unfair for sure because in our locker room, we knew what he was all about. He was not a diva. He was very much a team-first guy.
Schneider: I heard things before I got there (in 2010) about his relationship with the media or how he was perceived. But by the time I got there, I think he had sort of made a decision to be more self-deprecating and be more approachable with fans and the media.
Luongo was a natural leader. But being named captain complicated things.
Daniel: I thought he did a really good job with media and with players, too. To me, he was very captain-like how he went about everything. I think the only thing, maybe being goalie, it’s tough to analyze all parts of the game and kind of be that voice to the media.
Hansen: I think stuff was forced on him that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. He was a leader before that, no question. People looked up to him and he was the reason we won most nights. Now it was almost like he was looked to be a vocal leader, too, in the dressing room. And that was never him. And in fairness to him, I’m not sure he actually knew exactly what we had to do out there (systems-wise). So it was tough for him to go in and critique our forecheck or neutral-zone regroups and stuff like that (for the media). But in terms of just kicking butt, there’s no question he could do that.
Higgins: It’s a similar accountability being a captain and being a goalie. You’re answering the bell every single night with the fans and the media. Obviously in a Canadian market, they expect you to win every night and, especially with some of the teams we had, yeah, we expected to win every night. But when things were going bad, he took it personally.
Schneider: He was always hard on himself. He always took responsibility. He stood up in front of the media and answered all the questions. He never ducked anything or hid from anything.
From practice to playing to plane rides, Luongo was notoriously competitive.
Daniel: We had so much fun on long flights. He was giving everyone a hard time about how we played cards. It got to a point where we would just do stupid things to get him to react.
Henrik: But if you asked him, he’s not going to say it was deliberate. He’s just going to say we were bad card players.
Schneider: He was a competitive S.O.B. Whether it was ping pong, poker or fantasy football, the guy likes to win. He hates losing more than anything. It just eats at him.
Hamhuis: He just demanded so much out of himself. It was contagious in such a good way. He established such a high standard for practice, for preparation, for games, for winning.
Hansen: He hated getting scored on more in practice than in games. The frustration and anger and chirps you got when you scored on him in practice… like he despised getting scored on. He would chirp me like, ‘You’re a 50-goal scorer in practice, how come you only score 10 goals a season?’
Schneider: He just worked so hard. He was always trying to do something to get better. There were no wasted practices, no wasted reps. I would put his talent third (among his most important qualities), behind his work ethic and competitiveness, even though he was extremely talented. Those two traits, in my opinion, that’s what separated him from a lot of goalies. And then you add the natural talent he had and it was almost not even fair.
Losing his starting job to Schneider in the 2012 playoffs surprised everyone.
Hamhuis: Schneids was such a great guy… and we were happy for Cory to get the playing time, but that’s always a tough one. Lou had a big contract, too, and with the contract came a lot of expectation and probably some extra pressure from fans and media.
Daniel: It’s always a little bit surprising when a goalie like Roberto gets put aside for another goalie. But at the same time, what Schneids was doing at the time, he was an outstanding goalie, too. For us, you support whoever’s in the net and we had a good feeling going into games, whether it was Roberto or Cory. But understandably, when a goalie like that gets put aside, it’s surprising for sure.
Schneider: The first two games of that series (the Canucks were swept in the first round by the Los Angeles Kings) weren’t on Roberto. You know, we were a Presidents’ Trophy winning team. And we’d been to the Cup finals the year before and the pressure was on. So going down 2-0 to an eighth seed, they were just looking for a spark. You can only play so many cards at that point in the season. But I was a little surprised.
Henrik: Schneids was an unbelievable goalie, too. But I can just say I understand how Lou felt — that he had done so much for this franchise and then that happens. That wasn’t easy.
The trade mission and how he handled it may have been Luongo’s finest hour (or two years).
Hamhuis: It’s a tough thing to deal with when you’re used to being that guy, and then you’re not. It takes a lot of humility and soul-searching to come to the rink every day and be a good teammate, and still support the person that kind of took over your job. That’s a really tough thing to do. And some guys do it well, and some guys don’t.
Henrik: That was maybe the most impressive thing, from both those guys (Luongo and Schneider). As soon as they stepped through those doors, they were teammates and it was like a regular day. They never talked about it, they had fun, they practised together and made each other better. That says a lot about those guys.
Schneider: We were friends. We always wanted what was best for the team. He was fully supportive of me and never said a bad thing to me or about me when he easily could have. He was very graceful with the way he handled everything — the whole controversy, the rumours, the trade. I couldn’t have asked for a better person and player to come into the league and learn from. I think that pushed me to provide the level of goaltending that the team was accustomed to having with him. I didn’t want to let anyone down when I played.
Hamhuis: To see how well Lou handled it at the time, it was very impressive. I did it in smaller markets later in my career. He did it in a big market with media all over him and everybody on it.
Schneider: I think it speaks more to him and his character that he didn’t make it an issue. He was the established guy, he was the All-Star, he was the Vezina finalist. Just because I played, it didn’t change anything about him.
Luongo’s legacy continues.
Higgins: People don’t realize how good they had it when they had it. It’s human nature, right? We joked around as players, like, just wait, it’s not always going to be like this. Time and perspective of the fan base, time and perspective for Lou… this has reached its logical conclusion as Lou gets his own night in front of the fans once again.
Schneider: I’m tremendously happy for Lou. I think it’s great that the organization and the city are honouring him. It was a little up and down at times, never smooth sailing, it felt like. But once he was gone, people realized the legacy he left behind and the level of play that he maintained his entire time in Vancouver. For my money, he’s the best goalie that ever played for the franchise.
Hamhuis: I think that’s pretty neat to really recognize the impact he had on the franchise and the organization. Guys like him, guys like Trevor Linden, Stan Smyl and the Sedins… the phrase ‘the heart of a Canuck,’ I feel like they really embodied that and truly left the jersey in a better place. Their legacy really carries on and has an impact far down the road with the standards they set.
Schneider: When you look at the people who dominated that era of hockey for the Canucks, it was Roberto and the twins. And they’re all in the Hall of Fame.
