“It wasn’t my call”: Canucks legend Luongo preferred LTIR to retirement

Vancouver Canucks legend Roberto Luongo said today that if it had been up to him, he would’ve ended his career on LTIR.

“It wasn’t my call unfortunately, so I would’ve loved to go on LTIR [and] make a few extra dollars, but it wasn’t my call,” the former goalie said today about his decision to officially retire.

Luongo ended up hanging the skates up for good in 2019. He spent the final five-and-a-half seasons of his career with the Florida Panthers after being traded by the Canucks in the midst of the 2013-14 season.

“By that point in my career, it was a tough year for me on the ice and off the ice as well. It had almost become a job just to get ready to go on the ice, and that’s what I didn’t like about it,” he said about the decision. “It’s just so much time making sure that my body was ready to perform, and then when I did get on the ice, the performance level wasn’t as high as I would’ve liked it to be.”

Luongo faced a long list of injuries near the end of his career, including a serious hip surgery in May 2016 and a knee injury in October 2018.

The goalie stepping away from the game triggered a retroactive cap penalty for both the Canucks and Panthers because of the structure of his contract. This was due to the fact that his cap hit across his career was not equal to the amount of real dollars he was paid. The difference was given as a penalty to the two franchises.

The Canucks were hit with a bill of just over $3 million for three consecutive seasons while the Panthers were penalized a little more than $1 million over the same time frame. Despite trading the goalie in 2014, it took until September 2022 for the Canucks to stop paying him.

It’s been reported in the past that the Canucks were offered the chance to acquire Luongo’s contract right before he retired so that they could put him on LTIR. This would have prevented the cap penalty that they ended up taking on.

“They gave the Canucks a chance to trade back the contract to do some LTIR stuff or whatever; they never did,” reported Sportsnet’s Satiar Shah back in November 2022.

The Panthers didn’t have the same motivation to get Luongo on LTIR as they were not as concerned about saving salary cap space, and their penalty was much smaller.

Luongo is being inducted into the Canucks’ Ring of Honour tonight as they take on the Panthers at Rogers Arena. There will be plenty of in-game celebrations, a bobblehead giveaway for the first 10,000 fans, and a special ceremony where the ceremonial plaque is unveiled.