I am just curious why people think Luongo's contract is so bad? By cap hit he's the 9th highest paid goalie this year and he's easily better than 4 or 5 of the guys ahead of him.
Would you rather have Rinne for 7m/year for 7 years? Maybe... Maybe not. If you think Luongo is only good because of the team he plays on how can you not say the same about Rinne? His team doesn't even attempt to score goals. I am not saying Luongo is better than Rinne but when you compare contracts it's not so obvious.
And of those goalies ahead of him that people consider "better", Rinne, Price, Lundquist? What has any of them won? None of them have led their teams to the Stanley Cup finals.
And 5.3m/year isn't that bad of a cap hit especially if you assume the cap will continue to go up.
According to capgeek:
If Roberto Luongo retires or defects in the 2020 off-season (age 41 as of July 1 that year), and was traded to the Washington Capitals 50 percent of the way through the 2012-13 season, following is an estimated breakdown of the recapture penalties for the involved teams.
Team Benefit Penalty
Vancouver Canucks (2020-21 through 2022-23) $6,739,667 $3,369,833
Washington Capitals (2020-21 through 2022-23) $1,927,000 $963,500
So bottom line any cap penalty affects Vancouver and doesn't really affect Washington.
If he decides he wants to keep playing for 1 million/year there are a plenty of teams that would love to have a guy with a 5.3 cap hit and 1 million dollar salary.