darren wrote:It's about absurd and unreasonable criticism. (Not all the criticism is absurd and unreasonable of course, I share some of it). It's about blaming Lou for shit that happens (or doesn't happen) 200 ft away from him, and expecting him to walk on water like Jesus Christ Almighty Himself because he takes home 10m (a number that is completely and utterly irrelevant to everyone on this earth except Aqualini's accountant). How many times has someone posted: "I don't care how tough that shot is, you make 10 million bucks so you HAVE TO make that save." In other words: "walk on water, please".
It's also about the selective memory about the performance Lou, and of other goaltenders.
"Lou lost us the Stanley Cup": But we won two of the games ONE TO NOTHING (completely forgotten) and scored a grand fucking total of EIGHT goals. But it's all Lou's fault. (By the way: the correlation between goals scored by Boston and Vancouver each game in the finals was near zero: it didn't fucking matter if Lou was great or a sieve, we never scored anyway. So spare me the "Lou sucks so bad that he made the rest of the team suck" argument because that argument sucks).
A Vezina nominee NOT named Luongo crapped the bed last night, but I suppose he gets a pass because those were tough shots (a pass that Luongo would never, ever get around here). I'm surprised this board isn't all over Lou for not getting the shutout. And can you IMAGINE what would have happened if Lou had let in that little five-hole softy in OT of the gold medal game? Or the brutal goal in game 2 OT of the SCF? Or the unscreened slapper from 40 ft in round 1 game 7 OT? (Right after making a series saving save on Sharp, but of course that's been forgotten too in the "Luongo playoff meltdown" narrative). He would have been nailed to a cross in the arena parking lot.
While I think RL is certainly the best goalie this club has ever had - by a country mile - I also think some of your comments are off-base here. I'll focus on two points:
1) It 100%
does matter what RL earns, and it's not "irrelevant". Salary is
always tied to expectation and Lu isn't immune to that. People want the players to perform according to salary. Whether it's the fans or the GM.
"He doesn't 'make' $10M. His cap hit is only $5.3M a year".
Well, that's false - he 'makes' what he's paid - and he only has a cap hit that low because of the incredibly risky contract that MG gave him. You could point the finger at Gillis as easily as at Luongo, but IMO, Roberto's become too inconsistent for that contract. If you are going to expose a club to the perils of a decade-long cap-hit like that for a 'tender, consistency had better be one of his strong points.
Interestingly, as ESQ has been pointing out for a few weeks, the stats tell a story of an elite level goaltender, but there is another tale of a "headcase meltdown" that I think unquestionably has an effect on the overall psyche of this team.
No matter where people stand on this issue, it's hard to argue that Luongo
doesn't have some mental fragility / focus issues, and I contend that it's becoming enough of a problem that his contract could now be problematic. It depends on whether one really truly believes that this team can win with Luongo in net no matter what sort of pressure he faces.
After years of staunchly defending RL, I'm now in the camp that it's too easy to get into Luongo's kitchen, and IMO he poses enough of an uncertain variable that he could actually threaten our chances at a Cup as much as he could be the key piece in winning it. He's very hot-and-cold when the chips are down.
I respect Luongo and all that he's done for this club, but I do think I'd rather pay the same money for a goalie with slightly lesser stats, but more certainty in the kitchen. Preferrably one that knows how to speak to the media in high pressure situations.
2) You make the point of Rinne crapping the bed last night - I didn't see the game, so I won't comment on that.
What I will comment on is a game between the NYR and our Nucks - which I did see most of - in which another perennial Vezina candidate stood on his head to stone us, while our goalie gave up a rebound so juicy that my two year old nephew could have buried it. That was the 1st goal of the game. You might feel differently about it, but I think Lu could have played that better and it ending up taking all the wind out of the sails. It spelled the end of that game.
Is he to blame for that loss? I think not, but he certainly didn't outperform the guy at the other end - 200' away as you say - that had had a much, much, much harder test than Louie did at that moment.
So whether the comparison is fair or not, he was
nowhere near what Lundqvist's performance was. Not even in the same postal code.
And that, my friend, sums up why Roberto gets a hard time on nights like that.
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