Roberto Luongo taken out after being leveled by Alex Ovechkin (Video)
If you’re a goaltender and you see Alex Ovechkin and his 6-foot-3 230 pounds of pure Russian fury coming down on you for a 50/50 puck, what do you do.
If you’re Roberto Luongo, you go after the puck. And get completely wrecked by Ovechkin.
The video:
Luongo eventually left the game, but was OK, according to the Miami Herald.
Luongo resumed playing and finished the first period and the entire second.
But the third started with Luongo in the training room and backup Al Montoya in net. Luongo said coming out was a “mutual decision,” although Gallant said the medical staff told Luongo during the second break that he wasn’t available.
“I wanted to keep going, but after what happened in the second (giving up three goals) we thought it best to sit out the third,” Luongo said.
“I was fine [in the second], but it wasn’t the kind of period I wanted to have. There was no injury or anything like that.”
Like the situation with Jonathan Toews on Dec 11, after such a play, how was Luongo allowed to stay in the game? Clearly, he was slammed in the head in a humangous big open-ice check by one of the NHL's hardest hitters. And he played an entire period. Oye ...
There’s something kind of interesting about a superstar player vs. a superstar goaltender colliding in a violent collision like this – mostly because we hardly see it.
It's hard to blame Ovi on this. He was going full bore and kind of lost balance on the play, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have taken out Luongo.
Would love to hear what that wacky Strombone dude thinks about the play.
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
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