Teams want Lu

[smurf47]

Keep posting...I figure Sunday might resolve this whole mess...at least I hope so.

[Primus099]

Keep posting...I figure Sunday might resolve this whole mess...at least I hope so.

[WiDeN]

the way Gillis has handled this whole thing so far? unlikely

he'll probably trade Luongo for DiPietro straight up so they can buyout DiPietro instead

[Ghostsof1915]

Basically Gillis made a contract to circumvent the cap. Now's he's painted himself into a corner. And the last thing 29 other GM's want to do is help him get out of this mess.

Think about it, what better way to hurt the Canucks than to force them to trade Schneider and keep Luongo?

Luongo would have been traded last season if he had a normal contract. If Gillis does trade Schneider and doesn't get great return, and doesn't knock people's socks off in the offseason making the team better. I would not be surprised to see him gone.

I hate to sound defeatist, but I have little hope with our hockey club. My hope is now on guys like Corrado, Tanev, Gaunce, Lack, Jensen, etc.

[babych]

Question: If too much water has gone under the bridge & Lu is too pissed-off to return to VAN - will the Canucks be able to circumvent his cap-hit should he hold-out & they suspend him for the 2013-'14 season? Could he play for Team-Canada if suspended by an NHL team? This scenario is possible. Lu would be very welcome in Sweden, Switzerland, Russia - anywhere that he wanted to show-up & play where existing NHL-agreements don't prohibit that.

[Primal Optimist]

And Pierre also mentioned he thinks Luongo is the best goalie out of all of the ones available.

[Primal Optimist]

The "NHL Board of Governors" & their new CBA rules including this abhorrent low-cap year....screwed-up Lu's situation - beyond belief! Don't be so hard on MG. AV did not give Lu equal opportunity to be #1 & skewed his stats with non-pulls, etc. That's been proven.

The quirks in the new CBA were a part of the League's plan to ding any up-start teams challenging the current power-broking-block for league domination. It's a game of thrones folks! The Original 6 won this round - handily!

AV said that he made-up his mind to coach for an Original 6 team...so he could WIN! He's a smart man. He knows who the politics presently favor...& who they do NOT.

[hsedin33]

The fans of this town can't handle their goalies, the management in this town can't handle their goalies.

Why would any goalie worth his salt ever want to play here. This is soo ridiculous.

Get rid of both and restart with someone else because I don't see Schneider thriving in this environment, especially with new hard ass torts in town.

[dorrcoq]

I beg to differ. Lu's 2012-'13 game performances were great. Unfortunately - his stats got dis-proportionately skewed by a few ugly games thanks to Coach AV's insensitive mismanagements.

One game was when the bulk of the team had flu & Corey had a bucket near after puking all day. Lu stayed in net for 8 goals against - when no one else was available as relief or to share in the pain.

Another classic game - saw AV sit 4 or 5 of his starters before the play-offs. This game included the infamous 22 sec shift by Capt. Henrik Sedin who was later dismissed from the bench & sent to the press-box to be rested. An egregious coaching call - that saw Hank ridiculed & maligned for it. The game was close until things fell apart late in the 3rd. AV refused to call a time-out, he didn't have Henrik at the bench to re-activate, nor did he put in Joe Cannata to play his 1st ever NHL minutes in goal. Again - Lu was hung-out to dry & got shelled for 8.

Take away those crimes against goal-tending protocols & replace those 2 games with Lu's more typical 1 or 2 goal outings & Lu's stats are rather impressive... especially from a back-up's roll. Remember - Lu's total games-played last season was only half that of Schneider's post-lock-out games...& only 1/3 of his usual work-load.

The hockey-world IS in the know here. AV screwed-over Luongo in many situations. This includes NOT playing him in either Game 3 or 4 vs SJ....when he was clearly one of few players going well. Lu has plenty of fans all over this league & I believe Stevie Y, Team-Canada's very capable GM,...is still one of 'em.

[poetica]

Yeah...take away every bad game, and nobody would ever lose and everyone would be a superstar. Take off the rose-coloured glasses.

[We Are All Cynics]

It's not rose-coloured glasses to consider how a team's bad play effects a goalie. It's reality.

Beyond pointing out how the team played like crap against low ranking teams this year which effected both of our goalies' stats, the games in which Luo was hung out to dry by a lackluster team effort and then not pulled as he should have been dramatically effected his stats in this shortened season with a backup's number of starts.

For example, as pointed out in this great article about "adjusted save percentage", take out just the last game of the year (in which most of our top players never even touched the ice) and Luo's stats would have been above average this year as they have been every year since 2004/05.

[poetica]

But he did play that last game so the stats are accurate. Considering that he is capable of standing on his head some nights when the team doesn't show up still doesn't excuse an eight goal performance. The same goes for Schneider or any other so called great goalie in the league.

[nuck nit]

"I think you may be forgetting another significant factor in that game though, namely Rome's hit on Horton which energized the Bruins, deflated the Canucks and apparently made the refs selectively blind. Despite the calls that might make it seem more even than it was, the Bruins were allowed to get away with significantly more than the Canucks after that hit. The already negative attention focused on the Canucks intensified greatly. It was a major turning point for the series and I think you're doing a great disservice to what actually happened to not even consider the effects at least on that game." Poetica

Well said.

Also significant to note is that Rome was playing at the top of his career and the Canucks had a decimated line-up on D.

The longest suspension in NHL Finals history was just another move that looked like a mob was running the league.

[TimberWolf]

"I think you may be forgetting another significant factor in that game though, namely Rome's hit on Horton which energized the Bruins, deflated the Canucks and apparently made the refs selectively blind. Despite the calls that might make it seem more even than it was, the Bruins were allowed to get away with significantly more than the Canucks after that hit. The already negative attention focused on the Canucks intensified greatly. It was a major turning point for the series and I think you're doing a great disservice to what actually happened to not even consider the effects at least on that game." Poetica

Well said.

Also significant to note is that Rome was playing at the top of his career and the Canucks had a decimated line-up on D.

The longest suspension in NHL Finals history was just another move that looked like a mob was running the league.

[nuck nit]

Hard to argue when Boychuk and Peverly didn't even get looked at for their blatant attacks on Raymond and Bieksa. A late hit? 4 games. Broken back due to a can opener and a wrecked knee from a two handed slash from behind? Hockey plays.....

[Riviera82]

Since we're talking about the 2011 Stanley Cup Final again, what I would like to know, which can most likely never be answered, is why despite all of the team's injuries was Luongo able to play so fabulously in games 1, 2, and 5, but play like absolute garbage in games 3, 4, 6, and maybe to a lesser extent 7? Sorry for the run-on sentence.

[smurf47]

Since we're talking about the 2011 Stanley Cup Final again, what I would like to know, which can most likely never be answered, is why despite all of the team's injuries was Luongo able to play so fabulously in games 1, 2, and 5, but play like absolute garbage in games 3, 4, 6, and maybe to a lesser extent 7? Sorry for the run-on sentence.

[We Are All Cynics]

Fair enough about those actually being his stats. But, it doesn't negate the context. Yes, Luo played that game, but so did the team and their contribution, or lack thereof, is absolutely a factor. (And it should be noted that no one actually said that game shouldn't be included in his stats, only that if you look at his stats without that final game it gives a much better, more accurate picture of his per game performance over the course of the season.)

Just because Luo (or any goalie) is capable of standing on his head to make up for the team's crappy play occasionally doesn't mean it's realistic to expect it every time or even that it's a good game plan to expect it at all, and especially not 2 games in a row. (In the second to last game of the season, Luo kept them in it, only giving up 2, despite the fact that they were outshot by more than double in both the first and second periods but the team still couldn't win because they forgot to play the full game.)

Oh, and the last game of the year was 7 goals, not 8. You're thinking of the Detroit game back in January.

Furthermore, the same did NOT go for Schneider this year (or most other goalies in the league.) Unlike Luo, Cory was pulled in two games in which he seriously struggled (one game after 5 GAA and one after 2 GAA on 2 shots) while Luo was left in for his worst games. Had Cory not been (rightfully!) pulled, he could have very well had at least one game in which he got scored against 7 or 8 times and seen his stats take a hit. Had Luo been pulled, as he should have been, he might not have had them either. The fact that the coach allowed it to happen twice with Luo was just bad coaching.

I think you may be forgetting another significant factor in that game though, namely Rome's hit on Horton which energized the Bruins, deflated the Canucks and apparently made the refs selectively blind. Despite the calls that might make it seem more even than it was, the Bruins were allowed to get away with significantly more than the Canucks after that hit. The already negative attention focused on the Canucks intensified greatly. It was a major turning point for the series and I think you're doing a great disservice to what actually happened to not even consider the effects at least on that game.

Also, Thomas was amazing that year no doubt. But you're ignoring how easy we made it for him in the Finals. He wasn't making tough save after tough save. Many of them were against his chest. We rarely set up the cycle, had trouble getting and keeping traffic in front of him, and most of our shots were one offs from a single person who had no other option. He was an very good goalie, but we wouldn't making him work too hard for it either.

You're also ignoring the fact that Boston only got to the Finals because as a team they were able to overcome when Thomas wasn't as strong. In the ECF Thomas allowed 19 goals against, or only 1 less than Luo allowed in the SCF. Thomas allowed 4 or 5 goals against in 4 of the 7 games in that series. (Fun Fact: By the end of the conference finals, Luo had allowed 41 goals against while Thomas had allowed 43 in the same number of games.)

Boston won the Cup because they were able to win even when their goalie didn't play well, winning 2 (of the 5) games in the playoffs when Thomas gave up 4+ goals. We lost the Cup because we couldn't win a single game (of the 6) in which Luo allowed 4+ goals.

Luo got 4 shutouts that year, 3 of which we won by scoring a single goal. Luo carried the team for those games. He just needed them to carry him for one game in the entire playoffs. Is that really so much to ask from the entire rest of the team?

As for the argument that Luo "demanded to stay in." That may be true, but it only highlights bad coaching. The coach should have made that decision. The coach should have done what was in the best interest of the team, not allow a single player to make an emotional decision about what he wanted. It is simply unfair to blame Luo for AV's failure.

I know it's comforting to think, but there's absolutely no proof whatsoever that had the games been any closer we would have won. If anything, there's ample evidence that that's likely not true.

We managed to score before the 3rd period only once in the entire series.

Luo got 2 SCF shutouts to make up for the fact that our team could not score. The entire team earned a win together in Game 2. In 2 of the remaining 4 games Luo did not allow more than a single goal through the first half of the game. That's about as close as you can expect him to keep it. And where was the scoring? If just keeping it close was what the team needed, they had it.

In Game 7 Luo gave up a total of 3 goals. (The 4th was an empty netter.) Only one of those goals came in the first period. If we had scored anytime in the first half of the game, it would have been tied. We didn't. Luo gave up the second goal at 11:11 of the 2nd period. If we had scored only once we could have got it back to a 1 goal game. We didn't. Luo gave up a SHG at 17:35 of the 2nd. Had the team prevented that breakaway, they would have had half the game to score twice and tie it up. Better yet, had they managed to score on that PP, it would have been a 1 goal game. But they didn't. In fact, they never scored at all. To say that Luo didn't give them a chance to win that game is just wrong. They had a chance. They failed to take it.

So, yes, goaltending wasn't nearly as consistent as it could have been in the SCF. But to pretend that Luo could have or should have even been expected to carry the team on his back for all 4 wins is ridiculous and unrealistic. A team wins or a team loses. Luo did his part for 4 wins. Because of injury, stress, refs, etc., the team did not.

[poetica]

Holy crap, Cory's been traded!!!

EDIT: Sorry, wrong thread. My jaw just hit the floor.

[poetica]

Fair enough with many of your points. I also agree that team injuries, reffing, dried up powerplay and Horton's hit contributed. And I also agree with you that had the games been closer like I pointed out that there'd be no guarantee we'd have scored either. However I would've felt better about the Finals had Lu been consistent and the games were close. It goes back to what you were saying about Thomas as I didn't feel he was necessarily the best goaltender either but rather only had to be good enough until Luongo folded. I still think we would've won Game 6 if it wasn't for goaltending as the Canucks were all over Thomas in the first five minutes before Luongo let in three quick and awful goals.

The only real issue I have with Luongo is consistency. For every game that he gets a shutout he'll match it with a horrible performance. You can say it's a team effort which I tend to agree but then the team is as much responsible for Lu getting his shutouts as much as his losses. It would mean Luongo is not a difference maker at all and we could probably do just as well with a drinking bird in net bobbing and weaving which would be cool just to hear Hughson call out "Great save drinking bird!"