‘LOU WHO?’ WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO FACING OLD TEAMMATES
Opposite net: Newest Panthers netminder had been looking forward to facing former team
Asked if he will miss hearing cheers of “Lou!” each time he makes a big save on home ice, Roberto Luongo insisted Saturday he still gets that here.
And on Sunday, he did. Just. Mostly it was from the same big guy in an upper section of BB& T Center — an arena at the edge of the Everglades that is anonymously named to anyone outside the South, home to a hockey team that is anonymous to many people who live here.
On a sunny Sunday afternoon, the Florida Panthers appeared to draw only 7,000 or 8,000 fans to their rink to see Roberto Luongo face his old team, the Vancouver Canucks. Every so often, you could here “Lou!” The rest of the time you could hear a pin drop.
The Canucks beat the Panthers 4- 3 in a shootout and Luongo was not a factor, one way or another.
He turns 35 in two- and- ahalf weeks. He has rejoined a team that is going to miss the National Hockey League playoffs for the 12th time in 13 seasons and last won a playoff series in 1996 when the Panthers were a surprise Stanley Cup finalist.
Luongo has joined a team that, in a broad sense, does not matter, playing in a market where people are likely to ask “Lou who?”
“Listen, every market is different,” he said Saturday about scrutiny, about swapping the blinding Klieg light of hockey in Vancouver for the dim penlight of hockey in South Florida. “Sometimes you need that pressure to get you going. But at the end of the day, it’s about winning. I put pressure on myself to perform; it doesn’t matter what market you are in. I try to be my hardest critic and normally don’t pay attention to what’s going on the outside.”
For nearly two years — from the time Luongo’s starting job in Vancouver was given to Cory Schneider in April, 2012 until Luongo’s shock trade here on March 5 — everyone in the NHL paid attention to the outside noise on Canucks goaltending.
In isolation, the Canucks’ success at shedding more than $ 27 million US of the $ 34 million owed to Luongo for the rest of this season and the next eight was a remarkable achievement, especially since Vancouver also ended up with an honest- togoodness third- line centre in Shawn Matthias and a decent goaltending prospect in Jacob Markstrom.
But in the context of how general manager Mike Gillis handled the Luongo trade mission, giving up last June and instead trading the younger, cheaper, better Schneider, Luongo- to- Florida still represents a surprise ending.
Then 11 days after the trade, here come the Canucks to visit.
“It was a fun game to be part of,” Luongo said Sunday. “I was looking forward to playing against the boys. And now that it’s done, I’m just going to focus on the rest of the season and next year.”
Luongo swung by the Canucks’ dressing room before the game. He and rookie Vancouver starter Eddie Lack, mentored by Luongo until the trade, joked that the game should be 0- 0. At least they knew it was going to a shootout.
But neither goalie looked especially inspired and neither did their teams — at least until the third period when the Canucks blew the lead, re- took it, then blew it again. Nicklas Jensen, who didn’t join the Canucks this season until after Luongo was traded, roofed a shot for the only goal of the tiebreaker.
“Everybody knows everybody’s tricks, so it’s going to be more about mind games than anything else,” Luongo predicted before the game. But he didn’t know Jensen. He does know the Canucks are on the downward slide of their cycle as a team. Of course, the arc on Luongo’s career may be at a similar stage, although he was terrific in the first half of this season.
The Panthers have been so bad for so long, everyone is accustomed to losing. But it is a foreign and unwelcome regularseason development for the Canucks, who have missed the playoffs only twice in 12 seasons.
“I don’t know, man,” Luongo said Saturday when asked about what has gone wrong for his old team. “I was trying to figure it out for a long time. We were playing really good. We were right where we wanted to be in December.
“And then guys started falling and getting hurt, and a lot of stuff happened around the team.
“You can’t really put your finger on it, but it’s tough to see something like that, especially with the fact we’ve always been battling for the top of the standings and that kind of stuff.” Then he caught himself. “Maybe I shouldn’t say we anymore.”