Roberto Luongo became a leader in Vancouver, then found his voice online

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Roberto Luongo wasn’t always a funny guy, Kevin Bieksa joked.

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“My first four years playing with Lou, like he didn’t say one funny thing,” Bieksa quipped last week at Rogers Arena. “Not in the dressing room, not in the restaurant, like the guy was not funny at all. And then the Twitter starts and now he’s like a comedian.”

Online, the former Canucks goalie found a voice. That was only after he found his voice in the Vancouver Canucks’ dressing room.

Luongo quietly created @strombone1 in July 2011. Over the next 18 months, there was plenty of chatter about whether the account was him or not, to the point that by the time he confirmed in February 2013 that the account was indeed his, it was an open secret in Vancouver.

More than a decade later, Luongo continues to tweet, showing his quirky, self-deprecating sense of humour.

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Article content Vancouver Canucks Captain Roberto Luongo and alternative captains Willie Mitchell, Mattias Ohlund and Ryan Kesler unveil there new third jersey in November of 2008. Photo by Carmine Marinelli /Carmine Marinelli, 24 Hours Vanc

The medium has its flaws, but for the former Canucks goaltender, who is to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on Monday, it was a godsend. It gave him a way to work out what he wanted to say before he had to say it.

“Twitter helped me in so many ways. I always had the same sense of humour but it helped me come out of my shell and it helped me deal with the adversity/criticism that I had such a hard time handling before I created the account,” he told Postmedia via, fittingly, a Twitter direct message.

Former Vancouver Canucks general manager Mike Gillis said Luongo revealing his humorous side on Twitter was just another step in the evolution of Luongo as a person and as a leader.

Gillis took over management of the Canucks in 2008. He saw a group of players who needed a push in their dynamic. He saw in Luongo a player who was already near the top, but who could be so much bigger.

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Being handed a leadership role would help the goalie, he believed.

“Leadership is a key component of your evolution as a player. Leaders are not born, they’re made. And if you’ve never put someone in a position where they actually have to be a leader, they’re not going to develop that skill set,” he told Postmedia last week.

“They become leaders because of experience, upbringing, opportunity. Winning. Lots of things go into creating leaders,” he said. Leadership also means being able to listen, something he said applies to management as well.

Gillis and his management team would ask the team’s leaders for feedback, asking how the managers could better support the players. The feedback was regular, and productive, Gillis said.

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“It wasn’t just a one way street, with a pure focus on ‘you need to be better. You need to do this.’ Instead it was, ‘OK, what can we do to help you guys? Where do we need us to go to help you guys be the best players you can possibly be?’ And we got honest and direct feedback, which I thought was one of the biggest reasons we were successful,” he said.

Vancouver Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo wears the letter “C” on his mask during the pregame warm-up prior to playing the Anaheim Ducks in a pre-season NHL game at GM Place on Oct. 5, 2008.To outsiders, naming Luongo as captain in 2008 was a controversial choice. A goalie hadn’t served as captain in the NHL in 60 years. It was an unconventional choice.

The rules say goalies can’t wear a C on their sweater, that they can’t leave the crease to debate with the officials.

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But Gillis and head coach Alain Vigneault saw a convention to be challenged. A captain is more than just an on-ice arbiter, they’re the central leader on a team.

There was plenty of criticism directed at Gillis and the Canucks when the announcement was made in 2008. Two years later, when Luongo chose to step aside as the team’s formal captain, to be replaced by Henrik Sedin, the goalie admitted the spokesman aspect of the job was draining.

Gillis still believes it was the right thing to try.

“We wanted to try and encourage leadership as best as we could. We had a leadership group that was really strong, highly motivated. Roberto was a quieter guy. He was an incredible player. He worked his ass off. And for us, the last piece of it, was him emerging as a real true team leader, which we knew he could. And you know, sometimes it’s so easy to criticize on the outside but there was a reason for trying,” he said.

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Article content Vancouver Canucks captain Roberto Luongo talks to reporters after practice in 2008. Photo by Ward Perrin /Vancouver Sun

Life experience plays a big role in becoming a leader. How you handle the challenges in front of you, who you are experiencing those challenges alongside, all these things play a role in your development as a leader.

Was Luongo funny before he created his Twitter account? Certainly, he says. Did the medium allow for him to find a way to consider about how he wanted to make a quip, before he had to commit to the bit? That’s clear as well.

The former goalie, who now works as a special advisor to Florida Panthers GM Bill Zito, said part of his own growth was learning that some people will always say negative things, no matter what you do.

Twitter, he said, had become very useful in that regard.

“Very therapeutic,” he said. “LOL.”

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He didn’t join Twitter until after he ceased to be the team’s captain and nearly two years before he declared his contract sucked, in hindsight a very challenging time in his career. It was after the Canucks had come up short in the Stanley Cup Final. Two years before John Tortorella was hired as coach.

“I think Roberto came out of that situation (as captain) — even though at times it was probably troubling and the criticism wasn’t deserved — he came out understanding we thought of him as a leader. We thought of him as an incredibly important piece of the dressing room,” Gillis said.

“It also allowed him to emerge as a voice, an original voice. To actually be much, much bigger part of the team,” he added.

The healthiest teams are the ones where everyone on the team, from the stars down to the players in the twilight of their career to the energetic rookies, feel they have an opportunity to lead and contribute in their own way.

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And, yes, you can have your goalie become a leader too.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

twitter.com/risingaction

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