Let me take you back a bit. Imagine you’re a kid and you’re at a Canucks game. The game is intense, it’s a close game and the teams are just going after each other. Bone-crunching hits, crisp passing and incredibly hard shots that sound like thunder when they hit the boards. The Canucks are trying to hold onto a lead with less than a minute left and the opposing team is doing everything in their power to score. They get an amazing opportunity to try and tie it but then…it’s in the goalie’s glove and then the crowd starts crazy. And what is it the crowd is cheering? Well of course, it’s a chorus of fans cheering “LOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”
The Vancouver Canucks have never had a goalie as good as Roberto Luongo and it’s possible there may never be anyone as good as him to put on a Canucks uniform. In my opinion, Luongo is the greatest goalie in Vancouver Canucks history and I don’t think it’s particularly close. The Canucks have had some pretty damn good goalies in their history too. Kirk Mclean was phenomenal and almost helped the team bring home their first Stanley Cup in 1994, but fell just short. Cory Schnieder was great when he was here but he wasn’t here for that long. Thatcher Demko could put his name in the hat for one of the best Canucks goalies of all time once his career is done, but I don’t think he’ll get to Luongo’s level. He played so many games during his career and you just don’t see that nowadays with goalies.
But maybe you don’t know just how great Roberto Luongo was when he was here. It was over a decade now since he played in Vancouver so there’s a chance you weren’t around to see him, or you were too young to remember, or maybe you were there but just forgot how good he was. So why don’t we take a trip down memory lane and talk about what made Roberto Luongo the greatest Canucks goaltender in franchise history?
Back when Luongo was first traded to the Canucks, the team was really struggling to find a goalie who could replicate the success that Kirk Mclean found when he was with the team. Mclean’s final season with the team was in 1998, but at that point, he was no longer a starting goalie. Since Mclean’s time with the team was over, it was a goalie carousel for a bit. Dan Cloutier played as the starter for a couple of years and did pretty well, but he was never a full-time solution. Alex Auld was the starter for a season but was never able to establish himself as a true number one.
But then, on June 23rd of 2006, the Vancouver Canucks make a trade with the Flordia Panthers where they get Roberto Luongo. The trade was quite the fleece from the Canucks as well as they gave up Alex Auld who wasn’t going to be a starter for them, and aging Todd Bertuzzi who was still pretty good at the time, and Bryan Allen who was a solid defenseman. But none of them would live up to the hall-of-fame career that Roberto Luongo displayed in Vancouver.
Once Luongo put on a Canucks sweater, he immediately helped solve the Canucks goaltending problem. In his first season in 2007, he put up a .921 save percentage. That season Luongo was nominated to the Vezina trophy for the best goaltender of the year award, which he did not win as it went to Martin Brodeur. However, the play of Luongo catapulted the Canucks into being a team that could truly contend for a championship. They had some really good players on their team, but they needed a goalie to take them to the next step, and they found that with Bobby Lou.
The years following saw the Canucks have some pretty good success, but not being exactly where they wanted to be. Luongo was spectacular for the Canucks but he did have some struggles during the playoffs. And no I don’t mean struggles staying on the ice because he had to go to the bathroom, but rather that he had some moments where he couldn’t be his best. This happened in particular when the Canucks played the Chicago Blackhawks for three straight seasons from 2009 to 2011. In 2009 Luongo was pretty good as he put up a pretty good .914 save percentage which is pretty good all things considered, but he wasn’t able to help propel the Canucks past a young Chicago Blackhawks team. The Canucks were hoping for some better success the next season against the Hawks but the Canucks ended up failing to them in six games again and Luongo wasn’t great in that series.
The demons of the Chicago Blackhawks were in the heads of the Vancouver Canucks and in 2011 they had a chance to exercise those demons as they finished as the top seed in the western conference (and league) and had to play the eighth seed Chicago Blackhawks in the first round. This series was legacy-defining for Roberto Luongo. And the first three games were great for him. He only allowed five goals in three games and looked spectacular. But then the next three games weren’t so great. Luongo allowed eleven goals in three games and the Blackhawks suddenly had erased a 3-0 series lead.
Luongo didn’t start game six against the Hawks, but he did start game seven and this game might’ve changed his career forever. If he lost, many would see him as a fraud and a choker. Luckily this wasn’t the case. Luongo was great in game seven and made a save against Patrick Sharp in overtime that made eleven-year-old me scream at how good of a save it was. And then Alex Burrows gets the OT winner and the Canucks have exorcised their Blackhawks demons.
The Canucks went on to the Stanley Cup finals where Luongo did struggle when in Boston but was great in Vancouver. Until game seven…It is so unfortunate that the Canucks didn’t win the Stanley Cup that year for many reasons but one of them being that this was as close as Roberto Luongo got to winning a cup.
The Canucks never got to that height again and things went a little south with Luongo after that finals loss. The net was split between him and Cory Schneider where Schneider eventually took over, but then both goalies ended up getting traded which ended an ear in Canucks goalie history.
Luongo is a Hall of Famer and undeniably so and that conversation started with his time playing for the Vancouver Canucks. Luongo was just inducted into the Canucks ring of honour but the Canucks absolutely should’ve retired his jersey. The Canucks may never have a goalie as good as Luongo and he was one of a kind who brought the Canucks some of its best memories in team history.
The Canucks have been spoiled with great goalies over the last decade and a half (which we will talk more about later) and Roberto Luongo is the most important goalie of the bunch. I think he is undeniably the best goalie in team history and he should be more appreciated for how fantastic of a career he had.
So next time you go and see a Canucks game, make sure you check out his ring of honour display and let out a good old “LOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU!”