Thirty Years of the Game at its Best by Gare Joyce

Author:Gare Joyce
Language: ru
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780143181972
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)
Published: 2010-12-31T20:00:00+00:00

Goaltender Roberto

Luongo was Canada’s

best player in

Winnipeg. It turned

out that great wasn’t

good enough to win the

host team a gold medal

against Russia in the

final.

The indelible signature to the 1999 tournament was supplied by goaltender Roberto Luongo. Even in defeat, Luongo’s remarkable efforts in nearly single-handedly capturing gold for Team Canada on a frigid January evening at the Winnipeg Arena set a standard only a handful of Canadian junior goalies have been able to match over the long history of the event.

With arch-rival Russia as the opponent it didn’t turn out to be Canada’s night, despite the relentless, screaming support of the sea of white, but it surely was Luongo’s night. If not for Luongo, if it had been a goaltender who was only very good, the Russians would have run Canada out of the old barn under the giant portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that night, and ruined the sense that the home country had bounced back after the eighth-place finish at the world juniors the previous year in Finland.

“Roberto was our best player throughout the tournament,” defenceman Robyn Regehr recalled. “But I thought he saved his best performance for that game.”

That, of course, was exactly what Luongo was supposed to do. At the time, he was the highest drafted goaltender in the history of the NHL, with the New York Islanders selecting him fourth overall in 1997. He had been part of the Canadian junior squad that had suffered a shocking defeat to Kazakhstan in 1998. Luongo,

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