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Report: Roberto Luongo alerted Canucks about pending retirement in 2019, but team chose cap recapture instead



Report: Roberto Luongo alerted Canucks about pending retirement in 2019, but team chose cap recapture instead

by yosoo

13 Comments

  1. St_BiggieCheese

    They would have just overpaid Roussell instead

  2. I really want to believe that this story isn’t true as presented, or there’s some detail that isn’t being reported. IE: they didn’t tell us that Florida demanded five 1sts for the remainder of Lou’s contract.

  3. mediumyeet

    “for whatever reason the Canucks never made the call”

    Classic go to move for Benning.

  4. Initial-Ad-5462

    This is something I’ve wanted explained for about half a decade. If a player decides he is no longer capable of playing, he retires. If management, with medical information, feels a player cannot play they go on IR. Is that not more or less how it goes?

  5. PAguy213

    Whatever. The Canucks were going nowhere with the 3.5mil anyway. Never held it against Roberto that Bettman made the shitty rules

  6. gentlemosquito

    It’s a report. Who do we trust? Stories are made up, it could be true. Lu might not say it’s fake news or the truth was skewed in the report.

    But ultimately if it’s true, I wonder if Benning hid it from the owners or the owners knew and didn’t do anything about it either…. If Benning said no and the owners said yes, you would think it would have happened.

    Maybe Benning did call and the offer was stupid but that isn’t reported or left out of the report or who ever Benning called isn’t being honest. Who knows.

  7. NotaRussianChabot

    I think the last thing we needed to do was attempt even more cap non-sense with that specific contract. The league would for sure have investigated the shit out of that

  8. crazycanucks77

    Like how did Benning have a job for so long. What did he actually have time for? He seemed to have run out of alot of time for being the GM for 8 years

  9. cornbatch69

    What would have been a reasonable return for the contract? A 3rd or 4th? Its a move in good faith but florida would need just compensation

  10. Teddiesmcgee

    um.. .this does not make sense.

    >“…A source reached out to answer the question that was left dangling after Roberto Luongo revealed a month ago that retiring, rather than going on LTIR, in 2019 **wasn’t his choice.**
    >
    >Luongo did advise his agent at the time, Pat Brisson, to call the Canucks and let them know he wasn’t going to play anymore and that the **Panthers were going to have him retire** officially.

    The team can’t make him retire. He was still owed money on his contract. Retirement is not a team decision. If Luongo wanted to collect his money but wasn’t fit to play he would be on Florida’s LTIR and there is NOTHING the panthers could have done about that.

    Choosing between riding out LTIR vs giving up the multiple millions he was still owed on the contract was 100% Luongo’s decision and only Luongo’s decision.

    AT BEST the charitable interpretation of this little retcon story is that he was willing to let the Aquilanis pay him for 3 years while he lived in florida so the canucks could avoid cap recapture penalty and get LTIR space… the reality is that his goal was just to save florida money knowing he was getting a management job with them and would get paid that money anyways.

    There is no universe where he was going to be back living in Van working in the front office. When he was traded to Van he didn’t want to come (do people forget that??).. as soon as things got tough for him he immediately wanted to go back to florida and thats where his wife wants to be. Everything he did he did for the benefit of the himself and the Florida Panthers.

    TLDR… the idea that he was “forced to retire” and it wasn’t his decision is BS… its not even legal.

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