Does Luongo Stay or Go?

Is that even a question? Seriously?

Right after the loss on Monday night, the Team 1040's phone lines were burning up with fury. Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun first wrote a story making a case that Luongo should be traded. He went through the past winners of the Stanley Cup and suggested that the end for the "franchise" goalie had come. He asks, with regards to paying Luongo 7.5 million/year: at what point does cost exceed benefit?

Then Ed Willies today went on today about how maybe Gillis might make a move to trade Luongo to free up some cap room. He looked at the remaining teams, their goalies that they have on the roster and concluded that the teams didn't build themselves around their goalie like Vancouver has.

I understand this is part of your job Mr. Cole and Mr. Willies, that you have to write the stories even if they are written just to rile up the readers. But let me delve into how I think this is a BAD idea.

First of all, do you remember: Cloutier? Potvin? Irbe? Whitmore? Vancouver has had some crappy goalies. Do you remember when Cloutier either just sucked or was injured and you longed to have a superstar goalie? I do. I wished we could have a great goalie.

Cole suggests that perhaps we would want to trade Luongo for Jeff Carter and one of their goalies. Hold on. Think about that. I believe that going into this year's playoffs, the biggest question with regard to their team was their goaltending. They have lost, because their goaltending didn't step it up. In fact, Biron and Nittymaki are both becoming free agents on July 1st, and who are the Flyers looking into to bring in as their goalie? RAY EMERY!

With all the fire power that the Flyers had, their goalie situation, in which they have two mediocre goalies, it still wasn't enough to get them the win over the Penguins.

With regard to the teams currently in the playoffs.
1. Marc-Andrew Fleury - is a FRANCHISE goalie. Picked 1st overall in the 2003 draft (before Eric Staal). He signed a seven year 35 million dollar contract.
2. Nikolai Khabibulin - Is on a four year 27 million dollar contract.
3. Jonas Hillier - OK so he's not a superstar, but who's on the bench of the Ducks? Jean-Sebastien Giguere. So where he's playing or not, Giggy's getting paid to be on their roster.

If you watched Game 6, you know Luongo let in some goals that he should have saved, you really just can't win letting in 7 goals. But the defense wasn't playing their best game either. And I think that the Canucks should have really wrapped up this series earlier. In Game 4, on the road, they should have applied more pressure and won that game. They would have been up 3-1 in the series, but where was the offense? I wrote a post that said "you can't with 15 shots", where was the blame on the forwards for not stepping up their game that night?

I don't think it is the right move to trade away Luongo. Clearly I'm not Mike Gillis, and he's has some tough decisions to make, which depends on if Luongo would want to keep playing here. Obviously if the answer is no, Gillis will be much more likely to pull the trigger sooner rather than later. But if he is willing to resign here, and Gillis is thinking about trading him, the offer better blow his mind.