On Thursday morning, Roberto Luongo met with the Vancouver media ahead of his Ring of Honour night. The Hall of Fame goaltender is currently in the front office with the visiting Florida Panthers as a special assistant to the general manager and will be on the ice with his family on Thursday night. He sounded excited to greet the Vancouver fans in attendance.
With the media, however, he took the opportunity to clarify a couple of moments in his time with the Vancouver Canucks.
First of all, he didn't request a trade back in 2013, when he and Cory Schneider were jockeying for starts and it seemed clear that his time in Vancouver was done.
"It wasn't a trade request," said Luongo. "It was more of a mutual [thing] with Mike Gillis. Cory was coming on and we had a discussion at the end of the year and I think we decided that it was best if I moved on and Cory was the guy. So, it wasn't really a trade request, it was more a mutual decision.
"At that time, Cory was lights out, so obviously I obliged and we tried to work together to work something out."
Of course, Luongo didn't end up getting traded at that time. Instead, Schneider was moved at the 2013 NHL Entry Draft to the New Jersey Devils for the ninth-overall pick that wound up being Bo Horvat.
Luongo infamously said, "My contract sucks" at the 2013 trade deadline in response to questions about why he wasn't traded.
In retrospect, the comment was a little harsh.
"I'll give you a little bit of the background of that," said Luongo, laughing, when asked about the quote by Jeff Paterson. "I, literally 15 minutes before I came out, found out that I wasn't getting traded to Toronto, so it was a little bit emotional at that time. Didn't really have time to regroup.
"Obviously, my contract didn't suck, but for certain reasons it did. I just remember being so emotional in that very moment just because what had transpired 15 minutes prior. I wish I would've had a few more minutes to maybe gather myself before I went out there."
The "certain reasons" his contract sucked, of course, were that the NHL had retroactively punished the Canucks for a perfectly-legal contract with a penalty so punitive and obviously targeted that it was quickly dubbed, "The Luongo Rule."
In any case, Luongo's sentiment that his contract did not, in fact, suck was echoed by his former general manager on the Sekeres and Price show.
“His contract didn’t suck,” said Mike Gillis. “What happened was post-lockout, changes that we clearly did not anticipate happened. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on with other GMs and the league."
