Roberto Luongo

[Flames420]

He was either hot or cold I'll agree. But it is hard to argue with his hot moments. He was on fire when he was "on". Plus he was the starting goalie in 4 Cup finals. Shouldn't that be a statistical threshold for the HHOF? What goalie has that on his resume and isn't in the HHOF? (Osgood only has three, 1998, 2008 and 2009)



There's no doubt in my mind that Luongo has a LONG ways to go to be considered a great goalie all-time. However, he beats Hextall in so many categories now. For starters:

All-star noms:
Luongo - 2nd team all-star ('04, '07)
Hextall - 1st team all-star (1987)

Wins:
Luongo - 308
Hextall - 296

Highest Hart finishes:
Luongo - 2nd, 6th
Hextall - 10th

Longevity
Luongo - 1999-2011
Hextall - 1986-1999

The only thing Hextall beats him at is the playoffs. Other than 1987 it isn't as if Hextall has other legendary performances. He was pedestrian in the postseason other times. He too like Luongo had a penchant for giving up the soft ill-timed goal.

I don't know how Luongo's career isn't at least Hextall's equal, and probably better.

Put Hextall in his prime with Luongo-sized equipment on that Canucks team and they win the cup. Hextall won the Conn Smythe on a losing team, Luongo wouldn't have been close to it even if the Canucks won game 7.

Luongo has played on an elite team for half of his career. Did Ron ever play on an elite team? Also, Hextall had balls and personality.

Lou is good but not elite, he lets in more soft goals than any Vezina candidate i've ever seen. The Canucks are an offensive juggernaut able to give him the lead way more often than not, when he doesn't have the lead he is average.

 

[Big Phil]

Two HHOF goalies fit the bill. Ed Giacomin and Tony Esposito. Both were known for oops type moments or games. 1971 SCF vs Montreal, game 7 past the halfway mark, Hawks up 2-0, Esposito fans on a slapper from outside the blue line by Jacques Lemaire. Canadiens win 3-2.

Eddie Giacomin had a few meltdowns during playoffs in the late 1960's. !967 semis vs Montreal, Game 1 up 4-1 with 10 minutes to go, Canadiens win 6-4.

First two names I thought of, wow, we agree for once

I think this is unfair to Luongo, in that it makes it look like Hextall is even close to him at this point.

At any given time in the past decade, if you were asked to name the top-5 goalies in the game, Luongo's name would likely pop up. I was alive for all of Hextall's career, and once the lustre of 1987 had worn off, which as I can recall, was very fast, no one ever called Hextall a top-5 goalie again, or really much more than an average goalie.

Well to be fair I did respond to the poster by saying that Luongo has at LEAST reached Hextall's status. I think that's a given now. However, 1987 was quite an accomplishment for Hextall. The Vezina, the Conn Smythe, etc. That trumps anything Luongo has done so far. However he had some pedestrian moments after that. But I think it goes to show you that Luongo has a long ways to go to being a HHOF goalie. All this time, there is never one time he was considered the best goalie in the game, just saying, that hurts him.

Right now you might have just as solid as an argument for Thomas as Luongo, and that has to be a knock on Lou.

 

[JT Dutch*]

Put Hextall in his prime with Luongo-sized equipment on that Canucks team and they win the cup. Hextall won the Conn Smythe on a losing team, Luongo wouldn't have been close to it even if the Canucks won game 7.

... Wow. Has the Luongo hate gotten to the point where he's being compared unfavorably to Ron Hextall? That's amazing.

Luongo's just 31, and he's already had a significantly better career than Hextall.

Luongo has played 731 total games, regular season and playoffs. He has had a .919 save percentage in the season, and a .917 save percentage in the playoffs.

Hextall played 701 total games in his career. He had an .895 save percentage in the regular season, and .897 in the playoffs.

Even accounting for fluctuation in league averages, Luongo is still clearly superior.

People love to reference the '87 playoffs for Hextall, but a career is more than one playoff season. How did Hextall do in '88? Or '89? Or '94? Or '95? Or '97? He was below average, and at most times he was downright terrible. And Hextall DID play for an elite team; the Flyers in 95-96 and 96-97 were definitely elite.

 

[Unaffiliated]

People love to reference the '87 playoffs for Hextall, but a career is more than one playoff season. How did Hextall do in '88? Or '89? Or '94? Or '95? Or '97? He was below average, and at most times he was downright terrible.

Put Hextall in his prime

It all depends on your definition of prime. /shrug

 

[seventieslord]

All this time, there is never one time he was considered the best goalie in the game, just saying, that hurts him.

It depends what you mean by "considered". I think a lot of people considered him the best in the game, at least in the 2003 and 2007 seasons... especially 2007.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Did Ron ever play on an elite team?

what?

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

okay so very quietly, luongo has cracked the top ten in wins, passing osgood and fuhr to settle into #9-- as of today one win behind glen hall at #8.

he's 48 wins behind cujo, and i think he will probably get there next year, if not the year after unless his body somehow falls apart. that florida team has nobody in the pipeline to challenge him, and he's got two more big money years on his contract, after which point it declines to "average" money for a year before plummeting to recapture levels. so he'll be around for at least two, if not three years. and it's a young team on the rise so he'll get his wins.

provided he gets 49 more wins over the next three years, and accomplishes nothing else of note, is he a hall of famer now? i find it hard to say no, even though i wouldn't necessarily feel good about it. as in, he would have compiled himself ahead of beezer or barrasso or vachon, but he didn't actually distinguish himself from them.

| |
1. | Martin Brodeur | 691
2. | Patrick Roy* | 551
3. | Ed Belfour* | 484
4. | Curtis Joseph | 454
5. | Terry Sawchuk* | 447
6. | Jacques Plante* | 437
7. | Tony Esposito* | 423
8. | Glenn Hall* | 407
9. | Roberto Luongo | 406
10. | Grant Fuhr* | 403
11. | Chris Osgood | 401

 

[Killion]

^^^ keeping your eye on Louie huh vadim? necro-thread-bump much?... but sure, amazing really that
playing the BF he's managed to stay relatively injury free, outstanding perormances & still very formidable.

 

[Voight]

People actually attempted to say Hextall was better than Luongo?! I've now seen it all.

But he's got a very good case. It doesn't help that he was robbed of the Vezina in 2004 & especially 2007 (GMs love them some Marty B) but he still boats all the big numbers people like and will reach more milestones before he retires, like Vadim pointed out. He was a top 3/5 goalie from 2003-2011, arguably anyway (give or take a few years)

 

[Czech Your Math]

okay so very quietly, luongo has cracked the top ten in wins, passing osgood and fuhr to settle into #9-- as of today one win behind glen hall at #8.

he's 48 wins behind cujo, and i think he will probably get there next year, if not the year after unless his body somehow falls apart. that florida team has nobody in the pipeline to challenge him, and he's got two more big money years on his contract, after which point it declines to "average" money for a year before plummeting to recapture levels. so he'll be around for at least two, if not three years. and it's a young team on the rise so he'll get his wins.

provided he gets 49 more wins over the next three years, and accomplishes nothing else of note, is he a hall of famer now? i find it hard to say no, even though i wouldn't necessarily feel good about it. as in, he would have compiled himself ahead of beezer or barrasso or vachon, but he didn't actually distinguish himself from them.

| |
1. | Martin Brodeur | 691
2. | Patrick Roy* | 551
3. | Ed Belfour* | 484
4. | Curtis Joseph | 454
5. | Terry Sawchuk* | 447
6. | Jacques Plante* | 437
7. | Tony Esposito* | 423
8. | Glenn Hall* | 407
9. | Roberto Luongo | 406
10. | Grant Fuhr* | 403
11. | Chris Osgood | 401

If you deduct his 42 SO wins, to make it even vs. Joseph, then he's still 90 behind CuJo. So he would have to step it up to pass him by the end of 2018 season. CuJo also has similar playoff stats, in twice as many games, during an era when goalies' numbers weren't quite as good as now.

Given that CuJo isn't yet inducted, it seems very questionable whether Lu will be. Whether he deserves to be is another matter, but without both Cups & hardware, it seems to be a tough road to HOF for goalies.

 

[Hardyvan123]

I ask as a Canucks fan who accepts that his bias renders him unable to objectively answer.

What would it take for Luongo to be a Hall of Famer? If he never won a Cup or a Vezina, would he be remembered as a Curtis Joseph?

Has had a Curtis Joseph type of career, not quite good enough for the HHOF IMO.

 

[Thenameless]

Luongo. Generally a top flight goalie. In short bursts (i.e. isolating for single seasons and not multiple) he could reasonably be considered the best goalie in the world. He did represent Team Canada, and while Canada is usually an overwhelming favourite, a bad day of goaltending can also lose a tournament for you. For Canada, he did his job.

In the NHL playoffs, he's clearly demonstrated that he can't distinguish himself from just another good goalie. And this hurts his chances at the HoF.

I'd go with "there's an outside chance, not a great one".

 

[FerrisRox]

Nope. To me, Joseph was a flake, a traitor, and the only thing he was ever the best at was losing.

What makes Curtis Joseph a traitor?

 

[ResilientBeast]

If Joseph isn't in, neither should Luongo

 

[quoipourquoi]

Roberto Luongo deserves a much better reputation than he has. I would put him in the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

well actually i have a hard time imagining cujo not being inducted within the next 5-10 years. i don't think i agree with that anymore than i do luongo, though. slightly less, probably.

 

[The Pale King]

Joseph's runner-up Vezina campaign is a tad overrated. Sure, Hasek kept him out of the top spot, and he had more first place votes, but that's baffling if you look at his .910 SV% vs. Hasek's .937. How did that even happen? I know the Leafs played much more wide open hockey than the Sabres, but that's still a massive gap. The league average that year was .908, and this is an era where a lot of the backups were standup dinosaurs (ie. Cujo's teammate Healy) and dragging that % a fair bit if they saw a reasonable amount of action.

It looks to me like voters were giving Joseph the lion's share of credit for the Maple Leafs turnaround, when in reality they only lowered their goals against by six, while the offense scored 74 more goals than the season before. The Pat Quinn factor really can't be overstated, and Sundin actually had some secondary scoring support. 97-98 is one of the rare seasons where you CAN make the argument that he had way below average linemates.

In 97-98 Potvin's .906 SV% was exactly league average. The Maple Leafs went from a 69 point team to a 97 point team, while their starting goalies SV% went from league average, to .002 above league average.

The 96-97 Bruins went from an .879 to a .914 SV% the following season, and that only netted Byron Dafoe a single third place vote.

 

[Voight]

Still baffles me that Luongo didn't win the Vezina in 2007.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Still baffles me that Luongo didn't win the Vezina in 2007.

It really isn't that baffling when you look at Martin Brodeur's statistics

 

[monster_bertuzzi]

It really isn't that baffling when you look at Martin Brodeur's statistics

I'm sure he means Luongo carried the sad-sack Canucks on his back more so than Brodeur did with the Devs.

 

[Voight]

It really isn't that baffling when you look at Martin Brodeur's statistics

.... Which really aren't that much better.

Luongo - 47-22-6 .921 SV% 2.29 GAA 5 SO

Brodeur - 48-23-7 .922 SV5 2.18 GAA 12 SO

Only thing he really has on Lu is shutouts. Theres a reason why he won with less than 3% more of the vote.

Just like all his other Vezina wins, he wasn't that far ahead or better than the competition, the GMs seem to like wins more than anything else.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

I'm sure he means Luongo carried the sad-sack Canucks on his back more so than Brodeur did with the Devs.

Right, the sad sack Canucks who finished 22nd in scoring, vs the Devils who finished 24th in scoring.

 

[TheDevilMadeMe]

.... Which really aren't that much better.

Luongo - 47-22-6 .921 SV% 2.29 GAA 5 SO

Brodeur - 48-23-7 .922 SV5 2.18 GAA 12 SO

Only thing he really has on Lu is shutouts. Theres a reason why he won with less than 3% more of the vote.

Just like all his other Vezina wins, he wasn't that far ahead or better than the competition, the GMs seem to like wins more than anything else.

You didn't just say that Luongo had a case for the 2006-07. Your claim was that it was "baffling" he didn't win.

 

[The Pale King]

I've got Luongo a bit ahead of Joseph. Both guys proved they could excel when facing a lot of pucks early in their careers, but I think Luongo was more reliable (outside of bizarre trainwreck games that even Hasek was prone to) than Cujo when they were on better teams later in their careers and seeing less rubber.

Their Vezina voting records are similar, but I think Luongo's 2nd place was a lot more impressive than Joseph's. If Lou takes that one home in 06-07, it's not a shock by any stretch, but if Cujo somehow beat out Hasek (as he almost did), that would have been one of the weakest Vezina wins of all-time (see my previous post in this thread).

Luongo was also better on the national stage, and if he didn't play the worst hockey of his life for a week in 2011, I don't think this would even be particularly close. That IS a big IF, but there it is. He's still got some gas in the tank, and I think he's already done enough to punch his ticket to the HHoF.

 

[Voight]

You didn't just say that Luongo had a case for the 2006-07. Your claim was that it was "baffling" he didn't win.

And you said It really isn't that baffling when you look at Martin Brodeur's statistics which really aren't that much better than Loungos. You're making it seem like he was far and away the best goalie that year and his stats were out-of-this-world.