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Columnist to Luongo: Quit being such a diva

Roberto Luongo,

Team Canada goalie Roberto Luongo walks off the rink after a floor hockey training session at the Canadian men’s national hockey team orientation camp in Calgary, Alberta, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh)

AP

Now that Roberto Luongo is ready to settle back into his starting job in Vancouver, you’d think fans and media alike would be ready to rally around him.

You’d be sorely incorrect.

After spending the past two years in limbo and wanting a trade out of town, he watched Cory Schneider wind up being the guy sent packing and columnist Tony Gallagher of The Province wants Luongo to quit being so dramatic about the entire situation.

Gallagher lays into Luongo for being a diva about the whole mess and says it’s time to put it in the past in his own special way.

There are those who would argue that Luongo is the totally blameless, aggrieved party in this whole sorry mess. And reading into his long period of silence, maybe Luongo was buying into that type of thinking as well, and in his heart of hearts, perhaps he still is.

But enough. Cut the melodrama already.

Yes, he mentally had checked out at the end of the season, and was expecting a trade, and that didn’t happen, and we understand that.

Fair enough, it was tough and very unusual. But couldn’t he have rolled with the punches a little better? Couldn’t he imagine he’d been traded — to Vancouver? After all, with Alain the goaltender roaster gone, there will be a whole new direction to this team, and some new, young faces.


Cutting the melodrama is a good idea, isn’t it? Ahem...

So let’s see: Luongo plays at an elite level, one that isn’t good enough to some in Vancouver despite taking the Canucks to within one win of the Stanley Cup, loses his job to Schneider and sees the writing on the wall that he’s eventually the odd-man out and wants to get out of town and he’s the problem here?

Tough to agree with any of that.

Related: Luongo finally speaks — and reveals he tried to void his contract

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