Tag Archives: goalies

New technique helps Luongo catch fire; Goalie alters his playing position to keep his catching glove extended, and ‘it’s working out’

Posted on March 25, 2012 by admin in Player profiles, Sun Hockey | No comments

>Canucks netminder Roberto Luongo went low to play the puck against the Minnesota Wild earlier this month, but says he's comfortable with a position change that involves keeping his left mitt high.

Iain Macintyre Vancouver Sun We're guessing it has been a while since Roberto Luongo slept in a tent, partly because it's hard for him to play online poker in the middle of a forest, even if the Vancouver Canucks goaltender could fit his couch, television and young family inside a nylon dome. But Luongo explained Tuesday that a goalie facing a National Hockey League shooter is some-times like a camper facing a bear. The objective is to make yourself appear as large as possible so the bear doesn't get the wrong idea and think he can eat you or easily pick corners. "It's more mental than any-thing else," Luongo said before the Canucks travelled to San Jose for the start tonight of a three-game tour of California. "I think it's an advantage to have [my glove] up there and show the shooter, so when he looks he doesn't see a lot of net up there." 'Up there' is Luongo's top, left corner, which...

Goalie dilemma – which way for Gillis?; It’s Luongo’s consistency and experience against star potential of the much younger Schneider

Posted on February 10, 2012 by admin in Player profiles, Province Hockey | No comments

Ed Willes The Province The decision over the future of the Vancouver Canucks' goaltending position might be the most important of Mike Gillis's administration but, in analyzing things as they stand, there is one number that stands out for Roberto Luongo. It is not the 10 years he has left on his contract. It's not the $5.333 mil-lion annual cap hit he represents. It's not even the number of Stanley Cups he's won. No, those are all relevant in the great Vancouver goaltending debate but the most important number connected to Luongo is this: 21,743. And that isn't the number of times Canucks' fans have called the open-mouth shows saying: "We can't win with this guy." That number, in fact, represents the number of shots Luongo has faced in his 12-season NHL career. It is the third-highest total among cur-rent NHL goalies which isn't overly alarming. But dig a little deeper and you begin to understand the Canucks may be confronting the law of...

Luongo will keep an eye on his improving game and one on Thornton, too

Posted on January 2, 2012 by admin in Player profiles, Province Hockey | No comments

Netminder Roberto Luongo, who played well in Vancouver's 2-1 overtime loss in Chicago, will start tonight in Denver.

Ben Kuzma The Province The last time Roberto Luongo got a good glimpse of Joe Thornton, he was taken by surprise. It wasn't so much that Jumbo Joe had the puck on his stick along the cornerboards during a San Jose Sharks power play last Wednesday in the Shark Tank - that's where the game's best big-man passer sets up shop - it's what the hulking centre did after that. Instead of looking for Patrick Marleau on a backdoor play, Thornton snapped a wrist shot under the crossbar during a 3-2 overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks for his first powre-play goal of the season. He could try the same trick today when the clubs clash in a rare 5 p.m. start at Rogers Arena. "I wasn't too happy that he scored on me, so I just let him know in the third period," Luongo chuckled of the ongoing gamesmanship. "Sometimes he tells me where he's gaining to shoot and it was...

Schneider pouncing on his opportunities; With Luongo back in winning form, backup with starter credentials aims to improve his rising stock

Posted on December 15, 2011 by admin in Player profiles, Sun Hockey | No comments

>Vancouver goalie Cory Schneider, who will start tonight when the Canucks play the Carolina Hurricanes, says he won't sulk and revert to backup mode.

Iain MacIntyre Vancouver Sun RALEIGH, N.C. On the first attempt of Wednesday's shoot-out practice, with goalie Roberto Luongo barely out of the fetal position after getting abused the night before, Vancouver Canuck defenceman Kevin Bieksa fooled his team-mate with a fake, did a spina-rama and backhanded the puck into an open net while delighted teammates hooted. Then backup Cory Schneider was confirmed as the Canucks' starter tonight against the Carolina Hurricanes. We're pretty sure the two events were unrelated. At least Bieksa did his part to eradicate what remained of Luongo's shootout confidence. "I told him: 'It's not you, it's me,' " Bieksa said when asked about his cruelty after Luongo went 0-for-3 in Tuesday's 2-1 shootout loss against the Columbus Blue Jackets. "It wasn't that he was bad; I was just too good." Apparently, so were Blue Jackets' captain Rick Nash, someone named Mark Letestu, and James Wisniewski, who is a defenceman. "Why is there an assumption that forwards make the best shootout players?"...

Luongo insists he’s happy Schneider’s a Canuck

Posted on December 10, 2011 by admin in Player profiles, Province Hockey, Sun Hockey | No comments

>Cory Schneider chats with Roberto Luongo during practice with the team on Monday. Luongo hasn't played since Nov. 13 when he suffered an undisclosed upper body injury. Luongo says he supports the decision to start Schneider in tonight's game.

Wayne Scanlan Postmedia News OTTAWA - For now, consider this the order of things where the always popular Vancouver Canucks' goaltending situation is concerned. First, here comes Roberto Luongo, walking off the ice in full gear, slapping gloves with fans and signing autographs for those clever enough to know the Canucks would be practising in a downtown Ottawa rink. Next, Cory Schneider, same drill, high fives all around. To hear players and coaches tell it, the idea of Luongo and Schneider conversing and kidding with each other is just as likely as this friendly mixing with fans. Never mind that one Canucks hockey writer described the goalie situation on the left coast as "the most divisive debate in British Columbia since the HST," the goalies themselves get along. It's the situation that rankles. Schneider, 25, is too good to be an NHL backup, and needs a team to call his own - if not in Vancouver, then somewhere. Schneider is finishing out the two-year deal...

Fans losing sleep over Lou’s pipe dream; As Vancouver’s ‘starting’ goalie struggles to find his elite game, alarm engulfs the Canucks’ crease

Posted on December 3, 2011 by admin in Player profiles, Sun Hockey | No comments

Cam Cole Vancouver Sun People who move to Vancouver from other parts of Canada often lament that they miss the four seasons. Roberto Luongo has no idea what they're talking about. The four seasons, he must know, are clear enough in the eyes of many a Vancouver Canucks fan: Despair, Alarm, Hope and Heartbreak. And anger is the background music, the rain that knows no season but falls on Canada's gold-medal-winning goaltender - sometimes just a mist, sometimes like cats and dogs - from time to time, all year round. While most of the nation braces for winter, Canuck fans are drumming their fingers on their armrests, impatient for the longest season, Hope - which typically runs from November through April, though most recently it extended into early June - to begin. Last spring's later-than-usual arrival of Heartbreak, which coincided with the 32-year-old goalie's inglorious Stanley Cup Final meltdown against the Boston Bruins, pushed back the onset of Despair, which fills the months leading up...

Luongo’s still got big game, teammates say

Posted on October 6, 2011 by admin in Player profiles, Sun Hockey | No comments

Gary Kingston Vancouver Sun Google search "Roberto Luongo big-game goalie" and it looks like every blogger on this planet - and, seemingly, some on Mars - have weighed in on whether the Vancouver Canucks' Bobby Lou is fabulous or a fraud. Buttressed with hockey sabermetrics and empirical evidence and armed with journalistic freedom, they've debated ad nauseam his ability to "clutch up" enough to win a Stanley Cup. Never mind that he won an Olympic gold medal with Canada in 2010, that he stood on his head in winning playoff Game 7s against Dallas in 2007 and Chicago this spring or that he has the third-best career playoff save percentage behind Dominik Hasek and Tim Thomas. Those playoff losses to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2009 and 2010 and, mostly recently, his Beantown meltdown in last June's Stanley Cup Final series with the Bruins, continue to provide ammunition for the doubters. He was brilliant in winning two 1-0 games in the final, but was ventilated...

Trouble has a way of finding Luongo; Vancouver goalie knows how to stir the pot, getting fans and critics talking

Posted on January 16, 2011 by admin in Player profiles, Province Hockey | No comments

>‘I always love playing in this building,' says Luongo.

Jason Botchford The Province Roberto Luongo apologized this week for yet another mini-controversy which divided the Lower Mainland. This time he failed to come out after being named first star on Jan. 5 because he was busy beating himself up for blowing a shutout against the Calgary Flames with 10 seconds left. From the tone of the debate, and the length, you'd think he'd just cost the Canucks a playoff series. It went on and on and on. With Luongo, it always does. No Vancouver athlete has been so divisive, especially when you consider it always seems to be so much about so little. Here we count down the strange string of controversies that have followed Luongo's career in Vancouver: 10 THE BATHROOM BREAK Who can forget Dave Nonis' face when his prized, centrepiece netminder failed to return from the dressing room for overtime in a playoff elimination game? Because of a trip to the john, Luongo missed 3:34 and needed Dany Sabourin to make...

Canucks’ Roberto Luongo forges a new game with coach Roland Melanson; The fact I got results right away was positive encouragement,’ says superstar goalie

Posted on October 14, 2010 by admin in Player profiles, Sun Hockey | No comments

Iain MacIntyre Vancouver Sun LOS ANGELES - In 12 years working in Montreal, Roland Melanson developed an instinctive, early-warning system for imminent danger. He can see trouble coming, the same way people in Kansas sense tornadoes and bartenders watch for Mel Gibson. Melanson saw trouble approaching this week in its usual form - a reporter. "I know you want to ask me about Luongo and Schneider and who's going to play," Melanson said in a pre-emptive strike. "I'm not talking about that. You can talk to the head coach about that. I don't want to send any mixed messages." Actually, Vancouver Canucks head coach Alain Vigneault and general manager Mike Gillis had the market covered on mixed messages Wednesday when the coach said the policy of job-sharing in goal was the GM's idea, not his. Vigneault was essentially telling Roberto Luongo that he is still the guy - that although the Canucks fired his goaltending coach, urged him to surrender the captaincy and declared...