Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

What Olympics mean for Luongo, Canucks

Roberto Luongo

Goalie Roberto Luongo #1 of Canada adjusts his helmet during the ice hockey Men’s Qualification Playoff game between Germany and Canada on day 12 of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics at UBC Thunderbird Arena on February 23, 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. (February 22, 2010 - Source: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images North America)

Since the Vancouver Canucks decided to reverse their goaltending strategy and keep Roberto Luongo instead of Cory Schneider, there’s been speculation about how Luongo must feel. The Canucks made it clear that they wanted to get rid of him and it looked like he had embraced that, but it never happened.

There’s even been some speculation that he might refuse to report to training camp rather than go through another season with the Vancouver Canucks, but that seems unlikely for a number of reasons. One of them is that he still reportedly has ambitions about playing in the 2014 Winter Olympics and while you might argue that he shouldn’t make Team Canada’s roster, that will be a certainty if he holds out this season.

So he’s likely to play and will be motivated as he competes Carey Price, Mike Smith, Corey Crawford, Braden Holtby, and perhaps others like James Reimer for a roster spot.

But there’s also a potential drawback for Vancouver, as Tony Gallagher of the Vancouver Province speculates:

The bad news would then become the fatigue factor, something that’s already been thoroughly examined with respect to the Sedin twins but ignored in the case of Luongo, because nobody thought he’d be in a Canucks uniform this season.

...

There are all sorts of statistics which indicate a goalie who plays huge amounts during the season tends not to win the Cup. Jonathan Quick had 69 starts in 2012 and won but he definitely bucked the trend, which only Martin Brodeur seems to have managed in any sort of long-term way. And when the Kings won, Quick was nine years younger than Luongo will be next April.

Canucks fans will remember that Luongo struggled after returning from Team Canada’s 2010 Gold Medal victory and ended up with a 3.23 GAA and .895 save percentage in the 2010 playoffs. And that was during an Olympics that were held in Vancouver. With Sochi, Russia hosting next year, there will be the potential for jet lag that disrupts a player’s rhythm on top of that fatigue.

Of course, Luongo isn’t the only player that faces this concern, but he’s a particularly noteworthy example because the Canucks will likely be counting on him to start in the vast majority of games over the inexperienced Eddie Lack.