One of the greatest goaltenders in the history of the NHL is finally hanging up his pads (literally). Roberto Luongo took to Twitter to announce his retirement and detailed his decision in a long letter to fans of his, explaining that he would love to stay on as part of the Florida Panthers’ organization in some capacity:
…Once I’ve had some time to process this and make the adjustment, I’d love to be part of the Panthers organization. This is where my home is and I still love and want to be involved with hockey. At the end of the day, maybe I didn’t win the Stanley Cup on the ice, but perhaps I can still put my name on it in another way. It wouldn’t be quite the same, but it would still be quite the accomplishment.
His retirement brings with it more than just a vacancy in the Panthers’ crease. Because of the structure of his contract and the fact that he is retiring before it is completed, both Florida and the Vancouver Canucks will face cap recapture penalties for the next several seasons. Though there is some dispute over the exact numbers, the most recent estimate from Frank Seravalli of TSN had the Canucks facing a $3.03MM penalty for each of the next three years, while the Panthers would face a $1.09MM penalty for the same duration. Luongo had three years left on his deal that carried a $5.33MM cap hit, though the Canucks were retaining $800K of that. The actual salary however was set to drop to just $3.62MM total over those three years, meaning he’s not giving up very much compared to the ~$93MM he has already earned in his career.
Regardless of the cap implications that his retirement causes, Luongo’s presence in the NHL will be sorely missed. The sarcastic, humble personality that he crafted through social media and interactions with fans made him well-liked across the entire league, even as he continued to put up incredible numbers. Third all-time in wins with 489, he will go down as one of the best goaltenders to never win a Stanley Cup or Vezina Trophy. His best chance at the latter may have been in 2004, when he recorded a .931 save percentage while appearing in 72 games for the Panthers. Unfortunately the team wasn’t able to help him and his 25-33-14 record cost him votes to the eventual winner, Martin Brodeur.
Or perhaps it was 2011 when Luongo led the league in wins with 38 and took home the Jennings trophy as the goaltender for the team who allowed the fewest goals. His .928 save percentage was a huge part of the success for the Canucks that season, though he would eventually watch Tim Thomas accept the award after an otherworldly season. Overall, Luongo finishes his career with a .919 save percentage across 1,044 regular season games.
Obviously it is impossible to see a hole appear in the Panthers net and not immediately speculate on who will fill it next season. While the team has James Reimer under contract they have explored trading him over the last few weeks, and are still being linked to free agent Sergei Bobrovsky. Though the cap recapture penalty is annoying, it actually may be better for a team with the cap space of the Panthers than trying to navigate the tricky long-term injured reserve waters. Bobrovsky reportedly met with the Panthers in recent days, but is also headed to New York to have some further meetings.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
nooooooooo
Yes, that contract sucks.
Both organizations had to see it coming though. Shame on them if this is some kind of surprise that they weren’t prepared for.
I guarantee he ends up being a talking head on one of the sports channels.whuch isn’t a bad thing.very funny/entertaining person and a heck of goalie.best of luck Lou.
Didn’t luongo sign the contract before they changed the cba to introduce recapture penalties? I’m not sure if that was the case, but if it is they had no way to be prepared for this.
NHLPA and NHL owners put themselves in their own jail. Nice job.
#LABORSTRIKE
NHL sure has some ridiculous rules. If you retire you forefit the money. If you fire a coach you dont have his rights. These are basic commone sense rules but nope not in hockey.
You do forfeit the money if you retire in the NHL… The problem was that his contract was intentionally designed for him to earn most of the money up front so he could retire without forfeiting much…
And it kept his cap hit down…. As a Canucks fan, I don’t like this outcome, but I do actually think it’s fair.
the issue I have is that the Canucks get hit with a recapture penalty. I know they signed him to the crazy long contract but if you are traded, the team acquiring should take full responsibility.
what if a player signs a 7 year deal, gets traded in year 3, has a horrible time with the new team and decides he wants to retire because he doesnt like the sport anymore. why should team A get a penalty? Team B knew the contract it was trading for?
This is much better than Luongo retiring next year or the year after. Cap penalties for the Canucks would have been at 4 mil+ and 8 mil+ respectively. They fully got a break on a contract that was designed to circumvent the purpose of the cap.
albeit the money lost by Vancouver, but Luongo was one of a kind that ranks up there with Belfour, Hasek, Vernon, Joseph in longevity in his years in the NHL , he will be a class act in what ever he chooses to do for the orginization.
Deals like Lou’s or Shea Weber’s don’t occur anymore, they’re banned. As such, that scenario listed won’t occur. The recapture was made to punish the teams who made these deals, and as such Vancouver should face the harsher punishment.
tylerall5… my issue (and I’m not a Canucks fan by any stretch) is that a team traded for that contract. I know you cant go back but just seems weird that a team could trade for a contract with terms but that the original signing team faces any punishment let alone the harsher punishment. I think the nhl should have said there are recapture penalties but that it is based on the team that owns the player at the time (maybe say a min of 1 year with that team is required).
Couple things piss me off about all this:
1) If the NHL didn’t like these contracts being signed…they had the final say so and could have told these teams to restructure them before they were approved, like they have to other contracts and trades in the past… and all of this crap would have been avoided..period!!
2) The NHL allows contracts like Pronger, Datsyuk, Clarkson, Horton etc. be traded to other teams ( multiple times in some cases) for cap relief, getting teams to the cap floor, when there’s no chance any of these guys will ever play again…but that’s not cap circumventing? Total BS.
Yes, Team B traded for this contract, but Team B traded for this contract knowing that Team A was still on the hook for most of the risk. Had Team B had to assume the full risk, it’s likely that Team A would still be stuck with the player. Same with Weber.
What’s interesting here is that there was no reason he couldn’t go on LTIR like all of the others (Hossa, Pronger, etc.) but instead chose to retire, giving up money in doing so….why?
Did Luongo want to return as the backup only to have the Panthers to tell him “no way” and this was Luongo’s form of payback?
Also, which network will hire him? Sportsnet, TSN, NBCSN or NHLN?
He could be the Tony Romo of hockey coverage.
Romo, yuk! Luongo isn’t a pretty boy!!!!!!!!
Two great points by King Jawa.
Also, Luongo may not have won a cup as a player but I could see him eventually getting one as part of a coaching staff.
Couple of points here:
@M34, I (would like to) think that both teams expected this as a possibility especially the Panthers. The Panthers likely had some advance warning that Luongo was considering hanging it up after last season and even if they never explicitly talked about it, they had to know it was a possibility with them chasing Bobrovsky.
@forwhomjoshbelltolls, its likely that the actual money remaining to him wasn’t a big enough factor to keep playing. For the Panthers, this adds a small cap penalty for the next three seasons but it also clears roughly $4m every year since they would’ve had to wait to the start of the season to put him on LTIR. So instead of waiting to the first day of the season to clear out $5m in cap savings, they can clear $4m right away which would help them chase Panarin and Bobrovsky.