Roberto Luongo may be retired from the NHL, but he never said anything about beer league hockey. The Hall of Fame goaltender volunteered as a substitute for one men’s league team and led them to a big playoff win.
One men’s league team needed a goaltender on short notice, so they posted a “goalie needed” ad on Facebook. That can be somewhat of a crapshoot. Sometimes, you get a netminder who just popped the tags off his equipment last week. Other times, you get an Olympic gold medalist with 489 career wins in the NHL.
Luongo gave one lucky team the latter, and to no one’s surprise, they won the game. Luongo scored one more clutch playoff victory, 4-2, and helped his temporary team defeat the five-time reigning champs.
One can only imagine the looks on the faces of Luongo’s opponents, slowly realizing in warmups that a Hall of Famer is between the pipes at the other end. Despite the loss, whoever managed to get those two goals past him will remember those forever.
Luongo was the No. 4 overall pick by the New York Islanders in the 1997 NHL Draft and went on to play 19 seasons at the NHL level. In 1,044 career games between the Isles, Florida Panthers and Vancouver Canucks, Luongo posted a GAA of 2.52 and a save percentage of .919 to go along with 77 shutouts.
In 2010, Luongo was the starting goaltender for Team Canada when they defeated the United States to win the gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics.
Luongo now works as a front office executive for the Panthers, and he got to lift the Stanley Cup with the team after its first championship in June.
