Vancouver Canucks: What happens if Roberto Luongo retires?

There are now strong rumors that franchise legend Roberto Luongo will retire this summer, following three consecutive injury-hit seasons with the Florida Panthers. What impact will that have on the Vancouver Canucks?

For a while in the late 2000s, general managers in the National Hockey League were locking up their star players to huge long-term deals, several longer than the now-maximum eight-year terms.

Having clearly not learned from the New York Islanders’ regret over signing Rick DiPietro to a 15-year deal in 2006, the buyout of which leaves $1.5m on the Islanders’ books until 2029, Vancouver Canucks General Manager Mike Gillis signed then-All Star goalie Roberto Luongo to a massive 12-year deal with a $5.333m AAV.

According to Elliotte Friedman’s latest 31 Thoughts column, Luongo is looking more and more likely to retire this summer. He’s far from the first hockey writer to suggest the possibility of Luongo’s imminent departure from the NHL, but with Friedman comes a hallmark of quality and insider knowledge that very few in the game carry. If Elliotte Friedman says it’s a possibility, then perhaps the countdown to retirement is well and truly on for the Florida Panthers goalie. Luongo had this to say to Pierre LeBrun on Monday:

“It’s a bit of a tough situation…I still love to play the game. We’ll see where it goes, I haven’t really made a decision one way or another. It’s going to be important once the season is over to talk to Dale and management and coaches and see what the plans for the future are. And hopefully they involve me somewhere. I understand I’m not 30 years old anymore and I can’t take on a 50-, 60-game workload.”

With the rumors of Dale Tallon looking to sign Columbus’ Sergei Bobrovsky to an expensive long-term deal in free agency, Luongo can’t expect to feature in more than 25 games next season. If he does indeed retire, the financial consequences of that decision could have a significant impact on the ability of general manager Jim Benning to press ahead with his plans for the Canucks.

The pain of cap recapture

As a punishment for those GMs signing players to lengthy contract extensions, the NHL imposed a cap recapture penalty designed to punish the teams involved if the players in question retired before the end of their deals. With Luongo’s deal paying him just $3,618,000 over the upcoming three years of his deal, retirement may look very appealing to the player. However, that would have potentially troubling results for the Vancouver Canucks.

Were Luongo to fully retire this summer – and not spend the remainder of his contract on IR, like Marian Hossa, Chris Pronger, Marc Savard or Nathan Horton have done – then the Canucks will see a cap recapture penalty of more than $2.8m applied to their cap total for the next three years.

This means that the Canucks will have a lower cap limit than other teams around the league, while entering a crucial three year period where the likes of Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson, not to mention others like Troy Stecher and Jacob Markstrom, will all be looking for sizeable raises. When you’re looking at adding anywhere between $20m-$25m to lock up the futures of your top stars, then losing a huge chunk of your available cap could prove to be a crushing blow. Elliotte Friedman explained the financial very clearly:

“Luongo’s future has ramifications for both the Panthers and Vancouver…If he retires, the Canucks face a penalty of $2,840,124 to their cap space for each of the next three seasons. Florida’s punishment is $1,287,209 — lower because it did not benefit as much from the contract structure. This can be avoided if he is stashed on Long-Term Injured Reserve, and his body certainly would qualify for it.

Luongo remains one of the best players to have ever played for the Canucks and is, without a doubt, the finest goaltender this franchise has ever seen. While most Canucks fans would wish a long and happy retirement for “Bobby Lu”, even the most misty-eyed Luongo-lovers in Vancouver would be hard-pressed to wish him that happy-ever-after if it means that the team is saddled with a near-$3m cap hit when the team is meant to be coming out of its dark period and into playoff contention.

It is, however, highly unlikely that Luongo would saddle his two favourite teams with such potentially-limiting cap penalties, and would instead ensure he ends up on LTIR. If he does indeed end up on LTIR, perhaps we could even see a romantic gesture from Jim Benning – acquiring Luongo’s contract to ensure that after Lu’s three remaining years are up, he retires as a Canuck? We will have to wait and see how this plays out, but the news of Luongo’s impending retirement is sad for Canucks fans, and possibly for Canucks management.

If Luongo does retire this summer, he will finish his NHL career third all-time in wins behind only Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy. Luongo does not possess a Stanley Cup – a fact which pains us all – but he possesses the wins, shutouts, saves, save percentage and overall impact on the game that will make him a surefire lock for the Hall of Fame.