Roberto Luongo, despite all the hate out there, won a lot of games for his mates in the regular season and the playoffs, and I am now going to honor that by presenting to you the top 10 Lou saves of the 2010-11 regular season while being clad in my Luongo stick in rink jersey. Enjoy, and bite me, haters, heheh:
10. (February 4) What is it with Lou stoning Tomas Kopecky? This was very Grant Fuhrian:
9. (October 20) "Hossa's gone! Hossa has a breakaway!" Yeah well Lou has an answer to that:
8. (January 14) That Niklas Backstrom is so shifty. But Lou butchers him on this play:
7. (April 5) Much like the save on Backstrom. But better:
6. (March 14) There are several Lou saves where he pops out his left pad to make a last minute stop on a rebound, but I think this save against the Wild was the quickest reaction of the bunch:
5. Desperation save vs Phoenix (November 21) I may have been at this game:
4. (December 3) If Lou wants to stack the pads to rob Patrick Kane he gets mad props, and the save goes higher on the list:
3. (February 14) Brad Winchester had nightmares about this one. Wow what a great lunging effort from Luongod:
2. (December 3) Oh. My. God. Eat it, Kopecky. What a save! Lou was on fire on this night as the Canucks beat the ChickenHawks 3-0:
1. (January 26) A massive toe save to preserve a 2-1 win over the Predators. This is my fave, but barely beats out the save on Kopecky at the #2 slot. Love Shortie's freak out:
Honorable mention: Dan Hamhuis, November 17 against the Penguins. Why? Because he's a Smithers boy like me:
PS: Mad props to NHL.com for having all the Luongo saves archived. I can say that after sifting through over 100 Lou saves, that he took a massive amount of shots off his chest or squarely in the pads because of his new butterfly positioning plus the play of the D in front of him. The butterfly style dumbs down the "WOW" factor so it wasn't so difficult to make a top 10 list. Shootouts were not included.
Coming soon to a Nucks Misconduct theater near you:
Top 10 Roberto Luongo saves of the 2011 Playoffs
Top 10 Cory Schneider saves of the 2010-11 Season and Playoffs.
Top 10 Canucks body checks of the 2010-11 Season
Top 10 Canucks kills (hits) of the 2011 Playoffs