You guys, leave me alone! You're all out to eat me alive!
(this was an early job, so kind of poor)

Yankee opened up some scabs that may never heal with that link to the Hockey Prospectus article on Luongo. Which was great, by the way. It reminded me of one of the most common, and well worn, knocks against Roberto Luongo out there: He can't win the "big game". The pressure gets to him and he chokes. 

So let's take a look at his results in "big games". 

First of all, we're going to have to define what a "big game" is, since it's a pretty subjective measure. Currently, "big game" seems to equate to "whatever game Luongo plays poorly in", so I think we need a bit better of a definition here. I'm going to call any game in the playoffs where elimination is possible a "big game", as well as any international medal game.

We'll start with his international "big games", which would be the 1999 World Junior Final, and the 2010 Olympic Gold medal game.

So here we have 2 gold medal games. One Luongo wins, one he loses. Both times he "outduels", so to speak, the opposing goaltender. In '99 he is awarded Best Goalie for the Tournament (that means he played pretty well, as far as I know). In 2010 Miller takes those honours while Luongo is left with the honour of being "that guy who Canada won in spite of", even though Miller let in a couple softies and Luongo bailed his team out in a couple circumstances (most noticeably the Niedermayer give away right at the circle in OT).
I consider both of these to be "strong performances".

For the playoffs, we have two games from 2007 (Dallas Game 7 and Anaheim Game 5), one game from 2009 (Chicago Game 6), two games from 2010 (Chicago Games 5 and 6), and two games from 2011 (Chicago Game 7 and Boston Game 7, although Game 5 against San Jose was probably equally a "big game").

From this, I would call the following games "strong performances": both games in 2007, Game 5 vs Chicago in 2010, Game 7 vs Chicago in 2011. 

In total, that gives us 6 strong performances and 3 weak ones. I would not call this a trend of "not being able to perform in the big game". Also, if we add up all the shots and saves from these games we get an average of 91.7%. Remember this number.

Let's take a look at a couple other tables before we leave this.

First up, total regular season save percentage for goalies with more than 250 career games:

Who is that there in third? For best career save percentage...ever, in the regular season? Looks like Luongo.

Next up, career playoff save percentage for goalies with more than 25 games:

Is that Luongo showing up again near the top? Tied for 5th place? Ahead of known "playoff performers" like Brodeur, Kiprusoff and Fleury? 

Remember that "big game" SV% average I told you to keep in mind? It was 91.7%. Exactly the same as his career average SV% in the playoffs.

Not exactly overwhelming proof of shitting the bed in "big games". In fact he performs, on average, the same in "big games" as any other game in the playoffs.

But hey, don't let me get in the way of the narrative.