(Article, Globe And Mail.) Canucks GM to blame for Roberto Luongo soap opera.....Luongos former agent speaks

[Cyril Sneer]

Grahame,Avery and Haglin come immediately to mind and I never followed Tootsy.

Sidney Crosby and Joe Thornton come next.

Then there are the other coaches he has insulted-quite a number of them.

He became Tampa Bay's starting goalie in the 2005–06 NHL season, but was criticized publicly by head coach John Tortorella after consecutive poor starts which contributed to the Lightning being eliminated in the first round of the Playoffs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grahame

[aGENT]

There's plenty of blame to go around. This article strikes me as mostly a jilted ex-manager making excuses and attempting to shift blame and "creative interpretation/omission" by the author.

The fact is that this situation could have been handled better by all parties involved and wasn't helped by the garbage, tabloid-grade local media or the finger pointing Toronto media.

Lupien's hand in that mishandling of the situation is likely why he's no longer employed as he's the only one Luongo can do anything about. (Lu can't fire himself, Gillis or members of the media.)

[apollo]

half this thread is about Lu, and the other half is about some dude texting and driving.

[Plaguez]

Why are you people blaming anyone for a contract that was signed under a completely different CBA?

Luongo's contract, like Hossa's & Kovalchuks were brilliant contracts designed to keep the players on the team for an affordable cap hit to allow those teams to build long term winners. If the CBA didn't get changed by buttman, with a particular screw you Canucks clause then Luongo would still be seen as an incredible asset with a great cap hit and a team friendly contract.

Want to blame anyone, blame the freakin owners who once again screwed all hockey fans and players with their third lockout.

[hudson bay rules]

Lou's side hasn't handled this well. Why else would Lou change agents mid stream?

[TimberWolf]

"I was saying Luuuuu..."

[THERETOOL]

im sure all the people on this board are little angels .. noone ever does anything stupid or dangerous .. i feel like im on a canucks forum with judge judy and friends .. Lets talk about hockey

[Guest Pinchin]

Lupien has one point of rightness that he is using as a springboard for his many points of wrongness. He is right, Lu was treated like a piece of paper or an asset. He wasn't dealt with the way I would have dealt with him, geiven the info I have. But Lupien is clearly speaking with too much emotion and is stretching reality. If Lupien expected GMMG to make a trade that he didn't want to make then maybe Lupien should have become the Canucks GM. This is a non-issue. It is being furthered by bias media such as Sportsnet and The Province and fans who prefer soap operas to hockey. Some of us are too focused on this single issue and refuse to see that fans here are just like everywhere else. We are not unclassy fans, we are not an unclassy team and for the last few years, for first time in my 40 odd years of following this team we have been good enough to garner hate arouond the league. You are foolish to think that is a bad thing. Do you think Pittsburg fan cares that Philly fan HATES their guts??? 3 small words. Get Over It!

[Guest Pinchin]

im sure all the people on this board are little angels .. noone ever does anything stupid or dangerous .. i feel like im on a canucks forum with judge judy and friends .. Lets talk about hockey

[smurf47]

Lou's side hasn't handled this well. Why else would Lou change agents mid stream?

[oldnews]

http://m.theglobeand...?service=mobile

It was Wednesday, April 3, 2013. The NHL trading deadline had come and gone, and hockey agent Gilles Lupien was sitting in Montreal, watching his star client talk to the cameras in Vancouver.

For 19 years, Lupien had represented Roberto Luongo. He had guided the Vancouver Canucks goaltender's every move from the time Lupien, a former NHL player himself, took a wide-eyed 15-year-old Luongo to an NHL entry draft just so the youngster could get a taste of what might one day be possible for him.

Lupien had been sitting with Luongo and his parents – Antonio and Pasqualina – in Pittsburgh in 1997 when the then 18-year-old goalie went fourth overall to the New York Islanders. He had been with him through trades to the Florida Panthers and, in 2006, to the Vancouver Canucks. And he had been right beside him, of course, when Roberto Luongo signed that 12-year $64-million (U.S.) deal that would take the goalie right through to the 2021-22 season, at which point he would be 43 years old and could look back on what everyone then believed would be a Hockey Hall of Fame career. With luck, he would have a Stanley Cup ring or two to go with the Olympic gold medal he helped Canada win in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games.

But now, here was Luongo, on the eve of turning just 34, telling the world: "My contract sucks."

Lupien started laughing. He laughed and he laughed. And then, first opportunity, he phoned Luongo and laughed again, both of them.

"Roberto," Lupien told his star client, "you just said what [Canucks general manager Mike] Gillis has been saying all along!"

Gillis had indeed been saying it, couched in different words, for some time. The Canucks had tried, and failed, to trade their former captain and, for years, No. 1 goaltender. The media had been saying the contract was the problem, the fans had come to believe so, and the one to blame, obviously, had to be the player who signed the deal.

"Every team knows your contract," Lupien told Luongo. "It's not your contract that's the problem – it's what they're asking for."

Unable to make the trade he wanted, Gillis had shifted to other drastic measures. He fired coach Alain Vigneault and brought in a coach notorious for slagging his own players in the media, John Tortorella. He dealt the goalie widely presumed to be the Canucks' new No. 1, Cory Schneider, to the New Jersey Devils for the ninth pick in the June draft, which he then used to take a centre, Bo Horvat of the London Knights. He announced that the goaltender of the future Canucks is, once again, Roberto Luongo.

This week Lupien and Luongo spoke again on the telephone. There was no laughter this time, but no tears, either. Luongo, 34, with nine years and $40.5-million remaining on a legally binding contract, was switching agents. Lupien was fired, J.P. Barry and Pat Brisson of CAA Sports were taking over.

"I was shocked," Lupien says. "But I understood, too.

"He said, 'Gilles, I want to take a new path – what do you think?' Maybe another guy they'd listen."

The conversation threw Lupien back nearly 20 years. After Lupien's own NHL career (five seasons with Montreal Canadiens, Pittsburgh Penguins and Hartford Whalers) ended, he had slowly built himself into a significant players' agent. An early client was journeyman goaltender Jean-Claude Bergeron, who had brief stints in Montreal, Tampa Bay and Los Angeles. It fell to Lupien to let Bergeron know that he had made the calls but no one was interested. It was over.

"You're like a doctor telling me I'm going to die," Bergeron told Lupien. "We've tried all the treatments and nothing is working. Well, I'm going to see another doctor, try another pill. I need hope – do you understand, Gilles?"

Lupien did, and does again. "How can I be mad?" Lupien says. "I really do understand. Roberto has a lot of guts. He was telling me 'I need a new message. I need new hope.'"

Lupien himself has new hope out of this – hope that the soap opera that has become Roberto Luongo and the Vancouver Canucks might soon finally be over.

"I played on a team [Montreal] with nine Hockey Hall of Famers," he says. "I've never seen a star treated like that. I think personally he's been treated like a piece of paper, a fourth-line player."

Lupien believes that in being so public for so long about the possibilities of a trade, the team undermined its own player. The media turned on Luongo, the fans turned on him, and there was no escape. He was like "a cornered rat," Lupien says.

"I'm in net," Lupien says of the goaltender he considers almost a son. "There's a guy at the red line with the puck and the fans start to boo me. The people aren't behind you. The newspapers aren't behind you. But you have to stop the puck.

"It's not like a forward who can pass the puck when people start to boo. It's not like a fourth liner who only gets out every once in a while. You have to stop every puck or else."

"It's almost impossible for him to perform under those circumstances."

Lupien says it could have been handled differently. A decade ago in Montreal, he says, then GM Bob Gainey called out those who were ripping Canadiens defenceman Patrice Brisebois, calling them "gutless bastards" and saying "We don't need those people – we don't want those people."

"In Vancouver," Lupien says, "they didn't say a word."

The fired agent says he understands the business, both from Gillis's point of view and from Luongo's, but he feels strongly that there was never any need for such drawn-out drama and angst over the possibility of a trade.

"It's okay to say you're going to trade someone," he says, " but then trade him. If I want to sell my car, and I want to get a good price for it, I don't say my car is always in the garage. There's something wrong with it. No one will want to buy it. You either say your car is the best car you ever had – or you say nothing."

The same day the hockey world learned that Lupien had been let go, Luongo learned that he was one of five goalies invited to the Team Canada orientation camp in late August.

Lupien will have a client there – Corey Crawford of the Stanley-Cup-winning Chicago Blackhawks – but he will still be cheering for the client who fired him.

He wants to see Luongo back at the Olympics.

"Just to show them how good he is."

RoyMacG

[higgyfan]

Yeah, mistakes have been made for sure. The real problem is that the Betman and his cronies feels the need to retroactively change up contracts to 'smack down' GMs that have stretched the rules.

[THERETOOL]

do you guys think that gillis should have given away lu for nothing ? just to be gentlemen like ? i don't ... he's an asset .. and a big one .. you do whats best for the whole , not the individual ..

[TimberWolf]

Yeah, mistakes have been made for sure. The real problem is that the Betman and his cronies feels the need to retroactively change up contracts to 'smack down' GMs that have stretched the rules.

[RyanKeslord17]

It doesn't hurt to try to help people even if it mean having to put them down a bit to get your point through, any negativity about the topic can somewhat make the person think about what they are doing.

[Guest Pinchin]

With Lou's new agents meeting with MG, I believe they will ask for a trade, and if not this season, will, after 2013-14, invoke the trade me clause Lou has in his contract...Lou will get his trade, and MG will be in more hot water....

[Guest Pinchin]

Bush league. I didn't like the contract or others circumventing but to be able to punish retroactively people exploiting loopholes that should not have been there is ridiculous. Those contracts should have been grandfathered and any further like contacts be punished after the new deal.

[canucks_qc]

It's Mike Gillis' fault? What about his agent and Luongo for signing the contract. What about Luongo for getting out played. Everyone had a hand in this fiasco.

[Guest Pinchin]

You got a point, but seriously, it's not even about you being a safe driver anymore, it's about being able to stay safe from the other really bad, or unsafe drivers.

I've seen people switch lanes without looking, turning left from the right lane, backing out without looking, it's ridiculous.

[CroSen]

Boring read if you ask me.

Lupien is in denial - it's not as simple as "it's what they're asking"...It's a combination of his contract and the point at which the return relative to what they're asking isn't worth moving the player.   He also seems oblivious to the reality that the Toronto media had an interest in Luongo's perceived value, and an axe to grind, which served to run down Luo's value in the perception of those people who listen to those blowhards.

Lupien can suggest they treated Luo poorly, but that's nonsense.  How exactly was he treated poorly?  By not trading him?  Nonsense.  By not engaging in a rant against those media personalities running Luongo down?   I didn't hear the agent saying anything, ironically.

Comparing a piece of paper to a fourth liner suggests that Lupien's perspective is bent in any event - players get traded for various reasons, and suggesting that he was treated like a 'mere' fourth liner is arrogant imo.

As for the part about the public nature of the trade talk - that all started with Luongo himself answering a question from overzealous Vancouver media, that he'd waive his NTC if in the best interests of the team - not a trade demand, but nevertheless, that is what got the puck rolling.

Stop complaining about Gillis as if Luo is somehow a victim in the process.  It's, ironically, just more weak dramatizing.