so luongo came and went and i’m only catching up on it now.
it’s too late to help the rankings, but a contribution if i may, for posterity:
yes, the stretch run of the 2008 season was a result of his wife’s difficult pregnancy. he was flying back and forth between where the team was and miami to be with her.
but two bits of context here that weren’t discussed:
1. this was a major turning point in the public perception of luongo, which affected his mentality. before, he was the franchise. but he was livid (and imo rightfully so) that the local press reported on this. i don’t remember any ill will towards the team about this getting out, but this affected his relationship with the media from the spring of 2008 until he came clean about his secret twitter account around 2012/2013 and rehabilitated his media presence from paranoid crankypants to wacky veteran. there’s a chicken/egg thing here: as he turned on the media, the media also turned on him, and so when that first chicago series got away from him, they really really piled on. both in the local media and around the league, he was really really maligned and imo that affected his focus on the ice.
he also was never unguarded around the fans again, because you’d get jackasses calling him out on radio call-in shows for “not being a good captain” and staying with the team in a playoff race when obviously real life was happening in real time. i think that played a part too. (the fanbase was, and to this day in some circles remains, really really hard on his wife too, which i imagine he didn’t exactly love. part of the context there is this was post-pronger trade out of edmonton and canadian fans were paranoid across the board of superstars’ wives not wanting to live in canada.)
2. the peak luongo was 2004 up to march 20, 2008. on that day, he was 5th in wins, 2nd in SV% (less than 0.004 behind giguere, 0.005 ahead of brodeur), 6th in GAA. he was very much headed for major vezina consideration. so in a way, bad luck to have had the 2005 lockout and then a disastrous stretch run that was largely out of his control interrupt an absolutely otherworldly peak.
otoh, he was never the same after 2008. he was still a superstar goalie in the prime of a hall of fame career, but he was never the same. and i always have suspected, beyond the media and fan part of it, the real issue was he slipped. and i get why. any of us with kids, we all slipped a bit when we had our first one right? and at luongo’s level, playing at the top 0.01% of all goaltenders ever, if his mind slipped from, say, 100% locked in to 95%, which is totally understandable given that there’s a human life you’re now responsible for, that’s the difference between the luongo who could win any game any time and the guy who would always give you a chance to win. i get that at this level there are guys — roy, hasek, and jesus brodeur pulled the tim duncan and dominated the finals while going through a divorce where his wife was actively taunting him from the stands — who can have kids and compartmentalize, but when he became a dad luongo slipped.
and finally the yips. luongo had them. why, i don’t know, but he absolutely did have them. you could see it in his body language. when he’s feeling it, he strides onto the ice (and he was always the first canuck out of the tunnel) balls out and gigantic shoulders way up, like the shadowy image of kaiser soze walking out of the fire when kevin spacey is describing him in the usual suspects. but when the pressure was on, he played so much deeper into his crease and you could practically see him clenching. and when the puck was in the net, his eyes said so much.
and the results speak for themselves. chicago series 1, 2, and 3. last minute goals, whether at the end of a period or famously at the end of regulation while holding a lead, were his specialty. you never felt safe with him, whereas in 2007 and most of 2008, and later with thatcher demko, i never worried. end of the slovakia game, holding a 3-0 lead, he lets in two goals in the last ten minutes, holding on for a 3-2 win and a berth to the gold medal game. then the last minute parise goal in the gold medal game that forced overtime, before the crosby winner. now luongo came up big in games he almost flubbed too, making legendary saves on demitra and patrick sharp. but he also put himself in the position of having to make them.
watch him lose his post on the visnovsky goal and how deep he is on the handzus goal (that said, he always had trouble with big guys in his crease, from young wayne simmonds and handzus when he was on the kings to most famously byfuglien, and patrick marleau of all people terrorized him on several occasions).
which leads me to the last piece of luongo context here: i think after 2010 he never really trusted his technique. ian clark was his guy, and he was there up to 2010, when the team let him go (clark was later credited as being responsible for turning bobrovsky into a vezina guy, markstrom late-blooming into a top goalie, and developing demko). the ostensible reason is they blamed the previous two years’ meltdowns on luongo losing his feet when there was a lot of traffic in front of his crease or east-west puck movement on the rush, leading to a lot of famous goals where he ended up on his stomach. so rollie melanson (also a very very good goalie coach who developed cory schneider into an elite goalie and depending on who you ask either gets the credit for carey price or the blame for holding him back) was brought in, against luongo’s wishes, and rebuilt his game, most noticeably having him play deeper in his crease but also dramatically changing the way he set and pushed off. luongo was a good soldier and did the work, but i always thought the earlier, more aggressive luongo was the better goalie.
none of this contains an argument on where luongo is among the all-time goalies, which i have no idea. but in a post-mortem of him as a goalie, these are my two, three, and four cents from living with him as my guy day-in, day-out for half a decade.
