Pick an adjective. Any one. Try to explain the three-way between Vancouver, the Canucks, and Roberto Luongo in one darn word.
I'll go with cryptic.
All summer – and, really, all last summer and into the fall, when a lockout dried our mouths from hockey and extended Bobby Luo's stay in Vancouver to what is now (once again) an indefinite one – we've had to read through the lines and a few funny Tweets to see how our star(ting) goalie really, truly feels.
On draft day, when Cory Schneider was moved to the home of Tony Soprano, we had to trust a short phone call with James Duthie. We then had some responses from Strombone1 (the Twitter user we all can safely assume really is Roberto Luongo). Then, we had the word of Mike Gillis and John Tortorella – two guys whose well-being was more reliant on sounding confident and triumphant than it was on being correct.
On Friday – in an interview with TSN's James Duthie, scheduled for 3 p.m. PST – Luongo will break his silence.
He'll speak publicly for the first time, just before Team Canada's upcoming Olympic camp in Calgary and just as the season slowly winds its way toward a full 82-game slate.
TSN did give us a tasty sneak peek at the interview on their website today, however, but there really wasn't much there beside some televised bromance between the goalie and his favourite television host:
Duthie: "Did it feel like a divorce... that you were already divorced from the Canucks and you were..."
Luongo: "Well, I use that analogy all the time. You know, that's what it felt like and I accepted it and I was fine with it, and I had moved on personally. I mean, the only problem is, she wanted me back."
(Both laugh. Duthie laughs a little harder than Luongo.)
There's really nothing there that hasn't been said, heard, or could be assume already.
Still, it can't aid Canucks fans that the phrase "I had moved on personally" seems to keep coming up more and more again. Luongo's a professional, and he's not the first player who has had to deal with and then move on from trade rumours.
As far as goalies are concerned, Carey Price, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Ilya Bryzgalov have all had tougher seasons than Luongo, rougher press than Luongo, and have been abandoned by their fan bases to a greater extent than Luongo ever was or has been in Vancouver.
But, if someone has "moved on personally" in the summer, you can't help but worry about where they'll go, mentally, when the season actually starts.
------------------------------------------------------------