ESPN: If the NHL decides to go with bigger nets, one of its top goaltenders said Tuesday he won’t be playing in the league anymore.
In a conference call Tuesday, Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo said he would retire if the league used bigger nets.
“If that day comes, I don’t think you guys will be seeing me in the NHL,” Luongo said.
Luongo said he would retire, even if the league made the nets bigger by just a few inches.
“I have no intentions of playing with bigger nets,” Luongo said.
Although the notion of fundamentally changing the game by enlarging the current nets is opposed by many general managers, in the face of declining scoring, it has become a hot topic in the NHL. Now that your heart has recovered from the mild heart attack you internally sustained, let’s stop and think about this. Perhaps Roberto Luongo’s threat is an empty-handed one; Bryan McCabe said he would never play in a salary-capped era and Jeremy Roenick said the NHLPA would never concede to Gary Bettman and his owners. This may be a knee-jerk reaction on Luongo’s part so don’t feel you need to drown yourself in the Vancouver Aquarium.
That being said, the NHL simply cannot allow itself to go to bigger nets. The NHL has already broken traditions by making wholesale jersey changes, throwing dots on the ice and including a shootout. If the NHL decides to go to bigger nets it would be breaking a tradition which has been in this league for several decades. We just can’t allow that gaping 6 x 4 get any bigger, plain and simple.
But don’t get me wrong, I admire the NHL’s willingness to try and create more offence to market to the American audiences, but there has to be some form of boundary here. Bigger nets just would create too much animosity amongst players and fans alike. The last thing this league needs right now is another controversial decision.
