First decision for Canucks? What to do with Roberto Luongo
There’s losing, and there’s losing. Which makes the assumption of many that the Vancouver Canucks will get right back to winning once next season begins, at least the kind of winning they did this year before they ran into the brick wall known as the Boston Bruins, speculative at best.
You didn’t hear anybody inside or outside of the Miami Heat organization dare suggest that basketball squad just needed to continue on ahead as is following their stunning loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA final last weekend.
No one’s saying they have to move LeBron James, or even one of his two running mates.
But that was no ordinary loss. That was not a heroic defeat, and so pretty much everyone figures something substantive will have to be done to alter that team’s critical flaw. Or flaws.
Well, the Canucks would fall under the same category, and the conversation will begin with Roberto Luongo.
More, really, should be about the Bruins now, the winners, rather than the losers. But that which followed the game made Vancouver the central story, and the combination of Luongo’s words and actions made him the central figure in the demise of the Canucks, a hockey club seemingly poised to bring the Cup back to Canada.
Over the course of the past 12 months, Luongo has now been stripped of the Vancouver captaincy — dumb idea in the first place — and fallen on his face when his battered and slumping team needed him the most.
How can they possibly bring him back next season?
Fact is, his horrendous contract, which doesn’t expire until 2022 and carries with it an annual cap hit of $5.333 million (U.S.), will make him very difficult to trade unless GM Mike Gillis is willing to take another terrible contract back.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/nhl/article/1010453–cox-first-decision-for-canucks-what-to-do-with-roberto-luongo