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So Why Exactly Does Everyone Want Luongo Gone?


DownUndaCanuck

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I'll admit he did flaunt around the gold medal a bit and he let the success get to his head a bit, but look at the two players and their maturity NOW, not one or two seasons ago. One player is willing to do anything the management and coaching staff ask of him for the greater good of the team, the other doesn't care which team he plays on, as long as he's playing more minutes.

And don't talk to me about meltdowns. Luongo single-handedly won the Canucks the most important game in franchise history - Game 7 against Chicago when the team in front of him was terrible, giving up chance after chance. If Luongo didn't make that extra save in overtime or the Canucks lost that game there would have been a major overhaul, the Presidents Trophy winners losing from 3-0 up against the 8th seeded team Blackhawks for the 3rd straight season. Luongo HAD to win that game, and he did basically on his own. Then against Boston he had no support whatsoever and managed to drag this sorry excuse for a hockey team to the 7th game with remarkable performances that the Canucks did not deserve. Sure he let in a bad goal or two in those blowouts, but the defence was responsible for far more. If you think a goalie like Schneider would have been the difference in that situation you're just plain ignorant.

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If that's the case then we should pull a Philadelphia and implode this team's core now and start building for not next season but perhaps the season after, because we have Schneider who may be playing really well around then along with guys like Tanev, Kassian, Jensen and Hansen. The main problem is that our core are tied down by NTC's, there is very little chance that the Sedins and Kesler, Hamhuis and Bieksa would all waive their clauses but if they did we'd be swimming in prospects.
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This isn't about any attachment to Luongo, this is about which goalie will give our team the best chance to win a Stanley Cup right now. The Canucks are built for winning now, not winning 3 or 4 years down the track like the Flyers or Oilers who have great prospect depth.

The goalie that gives us the best chance to win on a nightly basis RIGHT NOW is Luongo. Over 60-70 games, Luongo will play better than Schneider, a kid who has never faced the pressures of a full season. Then there's the playoffs where fatigue really comes into play and again, Luongo gives us a better chance to win a game, win a series and win the Cup. Schneider won 1 game for us and kept us in another 2 but that was it. Luongo kept us in both the first 2 games as well, and last season did a whole lot more.

Even if Schneider is able to play consistently over 60-70 games somehow (a big jump from 30 spot-starts), the playoffs is a whole new beast where he has limited experience. Meanwhile, we have a hardened goalie who is full of experience and knows how to win big, pressure games. Why bother waiting another few years for Schneider to gain this experience the hard way when we already have Luongo?

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Maybe we should make an official Luongo thread and merge all of them into one?

I don't want him moved but that's how sports is. As it's been described. The understudy is outperforming the star. Schneider will be cheaper, and a shorter contract, and hopefully won't have a NMC. Risky? Perhaps. But Schneider doesn't get over emotional letting in a bad goal and fall apart during games. Consistency is a big thing for a team.

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i think fans think Schnieder is the better goalie because he has had very few bad games or mistakes. Although that is true, he is yet to be tested on a full time basis, and what happens if he just cant handle the pressure of a no. 1 position? then we are stuck without Luongo.

It is clear that one goaltender has to go and just because of the age difference and the money issues, a lot of people of fans think it's better for the long term to go with Schnieder. Personally, i love them both. They are great, classy guys and both have paid their dues - Luongo played for how many years with Florida before being traded and finally making the playoffs.

-Schnieder has been the back-up here the last 2 years, and spent a while in the minors when many thought he was ready for the no. 1 job on many nhl teams.

Whoever stays, and whoever goes i support them and wish both them the best in the future. I just hope we don't end up trading one and then that goalie carrying his new team to win the stanley cup the following year. That would be the worse thing ever.....

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How can yoy say Luongo gives us the best chance to win Downunda when everything ,(management, stats) say otherwise??? Lou was ok this year but inconsistant, his playoff record is 32 and 29...Schneider is more consistant because he is technically and athltically better....read BETTER !!! it is for these reasons that Lou is playing second fiddle now. Lou had a great 2010-11 season but since then has spurned the teachings of Melanson which addressed his shortcomings . You can have your opinions but at some point you will have to face the reality that its just not luck that makes Schneids better or that Lou will find consistancy because his game does not promote that.

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I don't want him gone.

I don't think EVERYONE does but the media will make it out that way and push us to the brink of expecting one.

Go out and play hockey folks. ignore this media crap.

What good does it serve your team to support media piranhas, ask yourself.

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You might be right, I'm sure that SJ has had the thought for a few years now. A question to ask is whether you think the core is at fault or how

flexable their ice strategy is? The Twins, Burrows, Bieksa are 31, not that old. Lou gets moved for hopefully a top 2 but at least a top 4 dman and the perception of the core starts to change. Salo should never have played top 4 minutes.

Up front, as the year before, the 2nd line did not produce. A winger for Kesler, or a conversion of

Kesler to wing and the acquistion of a top six center changes the offence. 3rd line center is a need now also.

IMHO the addition of these 3 players would make Van competitve for another run. That is all

you can ask becuase winning it is a crap shoot.

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Yes, it is risky. Are you ready to invest all your trust and this team's cup chances in a goalie who has never played in more than 30 games? He could end up being the next Quick, or he could crumble under the pressure. On the otherhand, we have Luongo who we all know and can trust to play a solid 60 games, and 30 wins is almost a guarantee with him.

As for consistency, Schneider has not shown consistency over 60 games. He's shown consistency over brief spurts of starts. The longest period of starts he had was 7 games in a row and his consistency went out the window in that time frame when he was letting in bad goal after bad goal.

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It's not easier for a goalie to play like every 5th game, i've been a goalie myself and i found it much easier to play consistantly because then you're always in "game mode". Maybe that's just me to, but friends of mine which are goalies aswell agree with me on this point. And sometimes you have to take a chance at a young player and let the old one go, just to be able to move on.

And Schneider is a great goalie, fast, always square to the shooter and great rebound controll. And the number speaks for them self, it's not like you say, "Hey our rookie got 60 points this year and we need to resign him, though we can't take the risk of signing him, he hasn't been dominant in this league for more than one year!"

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Now yes, I've been a Luongo fan ever since he became a Canuck. Sure, I've watched him carry this team in times of need and let them down in big situations as well, but all things aside, I cannot understand exactly why people want to run this guy out of town and go with Schneider when I consider the following points:

Was it because Schneider had a good season and looked great? He started just 28 regular season games and has 38 career wins to his name over 4 seasons, with only 2 really significant seasons as a backup. This guy is still a kid, no matter how many people say he's ready to become a starter. The biggest reason his numbers are so great is not because he's playing on a good team or because the team played better in front of him than Luongo, but because he played in spurts. Schneider would only ever play once or twice in a row which is much easier on a goalie mentally and physically. The only time he played a long string of games (7 consecutive when Luongo was injured), his play really deteriorated until he finally cracked on the 7th game, letting in 3 goals on around 15 shots in a period and they were all brutal goals. The biggest reason his stats looked so great was because of the few, scattered starts.

Was it because Schneider excelled in the playoffs? Because I sincerely hope it wasn't. Schneider won just 1 playoff game and while he played well, these were nothing games for the Canucks. In all do respect to Vancouver, falling down 3-0 in the playoffs is essentially the end of any team's season so for me those final 2 starts Schneider played were nothing games. More importantly, the only reason Schneider was thrown in instead of Luongo was because of the team's disgusting play in front of him, so the playoffs should be completely ignored. If anything, Schneider was the one who ended up letting our team down, losing a goalie duel in the 3rd crucial game and a bad series-ending goal in whereas Luongo never got a chance to win a truly important, season-defining game for the Canucks which is unfair considering what he did last season.

Is it because people think Schneider is ready to be a full-time NHL starting goalie? Like I said, Cory Schneider has less than 60 games of NHL experience over 4 years of being in the league, and has only really had 2 significant seasons. He is still a kid and has no idea how to handle a full schedule of games the way Luongo, a true professional, does. Of course the only way for him to learn is by trying him out in a full season and see how he goes, but I for one am not willing to risk our team's cup chances and our core's prime years on a coin toss to see whether or not this guy can handle the pressure of a full NHL season, because there's simply no backup plan there in case Schneider doesn't perform well, in which case our season and Cup hopes are down the drain for the next few years. For those comparing Schneider to Quick or Rinne, these guys stepped right into the NHL spotlight with a few 40-60 game seasons before they really started to play well, which is plenty of experience compared to Schneider's 2 20-game seasons.

Is it because people think Eddie Lack is ready to be a full-time NHL backup goalie? Even if Schneider is going to be our starter, he will have to play less than 60 games to be even the slightest bit successful. We all know of the eerie stat going around that not many goalies in the last decade have won a Cup after playing more than 60 games in the regular season and our coaches and management are fully aware of this as well, getting Luongo's games down as much as possible to better ready him for the playoffs. So if Schneider is to play 60 games, we need a backup trustworthy and capable of at least 20-25 games, and sadly that is not Eddie Lack. This guy has no NHL experience whatsoever so we have no idea how he'll handle the jump from the AHL to NHL, and worst of all he has very limited AHL experience - just 2 seasons of limited games where he hasn't fared remarkably well in terms of wins (great numbers and has shined at times, but consistency may be an issue). All I ask from a backup playing 20-25 games is to have a record of at least 0.500 and I fear Lack may not be quite ready to win 15 NHL games in a season.

Was it because Luongo had a few collapses in the playoffs last season? Just looking at the NHL this season, no goalie is ever perfect or plays his best over the entirety of his career, but we are lucky enough to have one of the most consistent and successful goalies in NHL history in Luongo. When you step back and look at his body of work, Luongo will go down in history as one of the best, and quite frankly Cory Schneider will be lucky if his career comes close to that of Luongo's. We have no idea how Schneider will perform in the playoffs or whether he will be able to win those clutch games like the big games Luongo has won in his career (game 7 against Chicago, Gold medal game, his Finals wins) and so I don't understand why we would risk finding out whether Schneider will be good enough when we have Luongo who we know IS good enough and who will come through in those big moments, time and time again.

Is it because people think Luongo is past his prime? Firstly I'd like to say that the best way to win a Cup is by having a great core that works together well and hits their prime at the same time. We have the Sedins, Kesler, Bieksa, Hamhuis, Edler and Luongo as our core - all of whom are in or very close to their true prime right now. Last year was most possibly the peak of all of our core (as well as a few others), but that doesn't mean their window of opportunity is closed, because all of these guys are still capable of playing well. The problem with opting for Schneider over Luongo is that Schneider is far from his prime, especially as a young, inexperienced goalie. He's only had 2 proper backup seasons in the NHL and not many goalies hit their prime before their 5th season (goalies take much longer to develop), so during these years we would basically be wasting away the prime years of the rest of our core until Schneider finally develops into the best goalie he can be by which time we won't have much of a team in front of him. If we trade Luongo away, we might as well shuffle up our entire core to better suit Cory because it is almost impossible that he will hit his prime within the next one or two seasons after having played very little hockey.

Is it because people think we can move Luongo easier? Yes Luongo's long-term contract doesn't look appealing, but a 5.3 million dollar cap hit is very flexible for a star goaltender these days and many teams are looking for not just a young goalie, but a bonified star who can help them now. Just look at Philadelphia last season, they traded away quite a bit of future talent for a proven star in Bryzgalov and now look where they are. Quite frankly, more teams are interested in a young, potential star goalie because they aren't looking at making a Cup run now (there aren't many teams left where a star goalie is the last piece in the puzzle, but the first piece in the puzzle) but later when their good prospects hit their prime and develop well, which is where we could get quite a bit more out of Cory Schneider. Struggling bottom-feeders are more willing to part with their stars now for a future star goalie in Schneider and harvest picks now to be better in the future anyway, which helps our cause as we get a good player in his prime now who can match our core better.

Is it because people think Schneider is a friendlier, more likeable guy? It almost seems to me that Schneider is the one who wants more ice time and wants to be a starter, being a bit more selfish for more games whereas Luongo is willing to take one for the team and sit on the bench or even waive his no trade clause if need be to do what's best for the Canucks. If guys like Tuukka Rask can sit patiently behind an ageing Thomas for many years, then Schneider can wait longer than just 2 seasons and stop being so selfish. The last thing you want as an organization is to rush the development of your goaltender and I hate to see players go down the Hodgson-pathway like Schneider may be doing right now, but the thought of trading Kesler or the Sedins never crossed anyone's minds, despite the Sedins and Kesler struggling last playoffs and this season and Hodgson having a great rookie season.

So there you have it. Be careful what you wish for CDC, I have a bad feeling that trading Luongo will be the worst move in franchise history, far worse than the Hodgson-deal seemed at first, and will cost this team their opportunity to get back at the Finals. So what's your reason for hating on Luongo?

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