Does Luongo really meltdown in the playoffs?

[Zippgunn]

The same Parise that got behind alone Neidermayer and Weber? None of those are plug players you know. They're all all star players.

[terrible.dee]

Ah yes the old "the defenceman didn't prevent the player from taking a shot therefore it's the defenceman's fault" argument. I thought we were discussing an "elite" goalie here.

[BanTSN]

A lot of people here act like we won in '94 and lost the gold in 2010.

It's all part of being a goalie graveyard.

[rkoshack]

Ah yes the old "the defenceman didn't prevent the player from taking a shot therefore it's the defenceman's fault" argument. I thought we were discussing an "elite" goalie here.

[Hockey Fever]

It was the whole team that had a meltdown. Also a big factor is injuries over the past few years, they've had major bad luck with that.

[ThaBestPlaceOnEarth]

I thought Luongo had maybe five bad games out of 25, and of those some were bad games by the whole team, not just him. I don't think we would have gotten as far as we did if we had Schneider in net, or any other goalie who we realistically might have had instead of Luongo. He was and remains a key part of this team, and he's coming off by far his best season as a pro so I think this criticism he's been taking is a little unwarranted.

[suolucidir]

I thought Luongo had maybe five bad games out of 25, and of those some were bad games by the whole team, not just him. I don't think we would have gotten as far as we did if we had Schneider in net, or any other goalie who we realistically might have had instead of Luongo. He was and remains a key part of this team, and he's coming off by far his best season as a pro so I think this criticism he's been taking is a little unwarranted.

[toyotafan]

yes

[BM24]

My question is... how can the media bash Luongo for last years playoffs? The Canucks scored 8 goals total in 7 cup finals games.... was Luongo suppose to get 4 SOs? Luongo had 4 SOs in 60 games during the year... and then put up another 4 SOs in 25 playoff games...

[yete]

[nuck nit]

[riffraff]

Luongo game 6 = cup gone. /thread

[samurai]

[*]good against Hawks when he needed to be (game 7)

[*]good enough against Nash

[*]Huge games against Jose - people forget how good he was

[*]won three games in the finals all with good performances with a team that couldn't score

[*]first loss in Boston was not his fault - bad bounces

[*]second stunk it up with the rest of the team

[*]game 6 lost his composure and focus starting with the thomas comments this carried into game 7. Team also was bad from game 6 on

I don't think you can really say that he melts down but it is perceived to be the case. I wouldn't really know how to describe him but i would not say meltdown. He didn't cause the team the cup.

I think he needs to stay away from the media as I think they get inside his head.

I also expect a very good year from him

[5minutesinthebox]

Roberto Luongo was his own worst enemy in the Stanley Cup Final. He made himself unlikeable and even despicable to his own team mates and Canucks fans, alienating himself from them in so many ways:1. No playoff beard: To snub hockey's proudest and noblest tradition by not sporting a playoff beard is to say that you are better than the game. It also ticks off the hockey gods. Sure, Luongo would have looked like he was missing a turban, or like a no-fly list terrorist, but so what? Thomas didn't care that his beard made him resemble Zack Galafanakis. Unlike Luongo, Thomas felt it important to show commitment to team chemistry and team culture rather than let his ego prevail.2. To not agree to be pulled early in game 3: Clearly, Luongo was far more concerned with his "number of times pulled" playoffs stat than he was with team success. By staying in that game, he demotivated his team and energized the Bruins by allowing them to make a bold statement and not just get back in the series, but get into the Canucks' heads and strip them of their confidence with the rout. Truly the TSN turning point of the series, all because Luongo was too proud to be pulled.3. Having his brother appear with him on CBC's After Hours following game 5: He credited his brother (a so-called "Quebec League goaltending coach") with giving him the necessary advice to come up with the win. This action must have discredited and embarrassed the Canucks' goaltending coach. The Luongo brothers appeared to be as giddy as school girls, as though the cup was now "theirs for the taking." Their naive optimism surely served as bulletin board motivation for the Bruins' comeback.4. Luongo's thoughtless comments: "That would have been an easy save for me"..."I haven't heard him say one nice thing about me all series." These boneheaded comments not only "emboldened the enemy", but revealed the depth and breadth of Luongo's insecurities and fragile mental state, and how needy his ego is. The Bruins made hay with this new ammunition. Luongo didn't need the added pressure on his shoulders and his mind, but there it was, like a new 500 pound gorilla now piggybacking on him entering the most crucial and pivotal game of the final (game 6 in Boston). He couldn't "walk the walk", making him look even more ridiculous after getting shell shocked. Again. Heading to Vancouver for game 7 with Boston's new team mate: Mo Mentum.5. Luongo's constant, first person singular speech: "I'm only one win away from winning the Stanley Cup, and that's all I care about"! The only time I heard him utter a team reference was in his post game 7 interview, during which he said "It's a team game - you win as a team, and you lose as a team. we all need to be better". Contrast that with Thomas' phrasing: "I need to do whatever I can to help my team win".6. Luongo's sense that he and their team were "bulletproof" on home ice, and therefore none of the losses in Boston mattered. To keep up the "we have home ice advantage" battle cry following humiliating road losses in Boston, until the series boiled down to a single "winner take all" affair, was misguided and sad. All of Luongo's selfish actions served to alienate him from his team mates and Canucks fans. The sad thing is, I don't think Luongo is smart enough to realize the damage he was doing. And he still hasn't learned from his harsh life lessons. Now, when asked to reflect on last seaqson, he says things like "The playoffs were fun whether we won or lost". "They were exciting when you think about it." Denial? Defiance? Mental illness? Who knows. It must be painful being saddled with him as a team mate.

[TimberWolf]

Does he deserve all the blame?

No

Does he deserve his butt kissed as "the only reason we made it that far?"

Hell no

[Zing!]

Ah yes the old "the defenceman didn't prevent the player from taking a shot therefore it's the defenceman's fault" argument. I thought we were discussing an "elite" goalie here.

[Pouria]

Roberto Luongo and postseason breakdowns

Cam Charron

September 20 2011 08:12AM

We are just three days into training camp, and already the 9-5 media is filling time on sports talk radio with a made up Vancouver Canucks goaltending controversy. The Kurtenbloggers, fresh in the noontime spot on Vancouver's TEAM 1040 radio, discussed at length whether Roberto Luongo was capable of winning a Stanley Cup, and whether or not Cory Schneider should be given a chance to compete for the starting job.

As of 12:22 Pacific Time on Monday, 83 per cent of fans on the TEAM 1040's website who voted in their daily poll agreed that "Yes, Cory Schneider should be given a chance to compete for the number one job." The arguments the Kurtenbloggers discussed included Schneider's improvement and success over a small sample of NHL games, but also the perceived mental anguish that Roberto Luongo suffers on a night-to-night basis in the NHL playoffs, and his propensity to "melt-down" and give up buckets of goals in "big games".

Let's face it: the goaltending issue that the Canucks faced in the Stanley Cup Finals was at the other end. Tim Thomas was a brick wall measuring about 7' by 5' in the Cup Finals. Luongo, admittedly, was pretty average over the course of seven games. In his 25 playoff games last season, Luongo won 15 games and had a .914 save percentage. In the first 25 games of the regular season, Luongo also won 15 game and had a .914 save percentage. Calling Roberto a regular season goaltender or somebody who has troubles in the playoffs is not just wrong, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the ratios at play. Sample size is a big issue when evaluating goaltenders, and this perspective needs to be kept.

Luongo's best games this postseason were Game 7 against the Chicago Blackhawks, Game 5 against the San Jose Sharks and Game 5 against the Bruins. Those were all games in high-leverage situations and vital in their respective series, and yet the Canucks only won those games by a single goal each - two of them in overtime. Much of Luongo's perceived postseason failings (despite never having suffered a first round loss) stem from the fact that his forwards appear to give up in front of him.

To show this, I'm going to bring up the last two Cup-winning goaltenders: Tim Thomas of the Bruins and Antti Niemi, the goaltender formerly of the Blackhawks who now starts for the San Jose Sharks.

First off, here are the percentage of games where a goalie gave up at least 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 goals.

GA Thomas Luongo Niemi

1+ 88% 92% 95%

2+ 58% 71% 83%

3+ 37% 42% 60%

4+ 21% 25% 35%

5+ 7% 12% 8%

As you can see, Luongo is not all that far off from Thomas. In one of every four of Luongo's playoff games he'll allow four or more goal against. The frequency with which Luongo gives up four goals (or more) is only slightly higher than the rate for Tim Thomas. Niemi, who I don't view as a good goalie even though he has won a Stanley Cup, seems to be much more prone to 3+ and 4+ goal "meltdowns".

The 5+ statistic seems to swing a little more towards the anti-Luongo camp, but 12% doesn't imply a meltdown every series, more like one every two, but that's not all that much greater of a rate than Thomas or Niemi. I will add that this chart shows just how lucky the Bruins are to have Tim Thomas: He allows one or fewer goals 42% of the time.

No, the worry I have with the 5+ statistic comes with the guys in front of Roberto Luongo. Even if a team allows 5, you can still win 6-5 or 7-5. Luongo has not had such luck. Here is a list of each goaltenders' winning percentage when they have allowed that amount of goals:

GA Thomas Luongo Niemi

0 1.000 1.000 1.000

1 0.769 0.833 1.000

2 0.667 0.706 0.778

3 0.286 0.300 0.600

4 0.333 0.250 0.273

5+ 0.333 0.000 0.333

The issue here is that the Canucks are 5-20 (.200) when Luongo has allowed three or more goals in a game over his playoff career. It seems that the Canucks have been extremely reliant on Luongo to keep them in games. (Niemi is .417 at 3+ GA, and Thomas is .313). Consider that Antii "knows how to win" Niemi allowed 21 goals in his six games in the Stanley Cup Final in 2010 - but you'll never hear him called a "choker" - not because of how he played, but because his team scored 25 goals in the finals.

Roberto Luongo can win a Stanley Cup. His "meltdown" propensity is largely a fan-perception issue, and if the Canucks forwards are on the right side of variance, those apparent meltdowns will certainly appear less meltdowny.

http://canucksarmy.c...ason-breakdowns

[Pouria]

I thought Luongo had maybe five bad games out of 25, and of those some were bad games by the whole team, not just him. I don't think we would have gotten as far as we did if we had Schneider in net, or any other goalie who we realistically might have had instead of Luongo. He was and remains a key part of this team, and he's coming off by far his best season as a pro so I think this criticism he's been taking is a little unwarranted.

[Aquiace]

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a Monty Python sketch. "This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction". Saying the opposite doesn't make it right, no matter how fervently one wants to change the argument.

So we don't win when we get scored on a lot. That's the premise right? It's the team's fault for not scoring enough, right? I can sorta buy that. But is it the team's job to score 6-9 goals in a game? If this guy is saying that's the reason for Luongo's win percent, then that's what the team needs to do. You know, as if scoring on Chicago, Nashville and Boston wasn't hard enough as it is, now we need to do it three times as much as we did. We won plenty of 1 goal games, but we got hammered in 4+ goal games. How do we win there?

As I said, saying the exact opposite doesn't make you right, it often makes you stupid in the other direction. When the team sucked, Luongo sucked. When Luongo sucked, the team sucked. And when one is good the other is too because it's not an individual sport.

It's not rocket science.

[:D]

Good article.

I always like to remind people how well Luongo would have had to have played in order for us to have beat Boston.

Game 1 - Canucks score 1 goal - Luongo must be perfect

Game 2 - Canucks have a good game and score 3 - Luongo can't let it more than 2

Game 3 - Canucks score 1 goal - Luongo must be perfect

Game 4 - Canucks are shutout - Luongo must be perfect for 60 minutes +

Game 5 - Canucks score 1 goal - Luongo must be perfect

Game 6 - Canucks score 2 goals - Luongo can't let in more than 1

Game 7 - Canucks are shutout - Luongo must be perfect for 60 minutes +

Obviously games 4 and 7 would be the hardest for Luongo to win, but luckily we only need four wins to get the cup, so lets see what numbers he would need to have led us to a cup:

In order to win games 1, 2, (either 3 or 5) and 6, Luongo could only let in 3 goals over these 4 games. So he needed to have a GAA of 0.75 in order to bring us the cup. Oddly enough, Tim Thomas did just that, 0.75 GAA in the 4 games Boston won.

So the only possible way for us to have won the cup would be for us to get Vezina quality goaltending that was far and away the best goaltending in the playoffs. Hardly sounds like our forwards and defense (awesome as they were) gave Luongo much of a chance. Anyone who wasn't Thomas would have similarly 'lost us' the series. Despite this, we still won three games, probably in large part due to Luongo's world class ability. A lesser goalie might have let us get swept.