On Wednesday night, in a game featuring the Florida Panthers welcoming the Carolina Hurricanes in a battle of non-playoff contenders, Roberto Luongo made a highlight reel save on Viktor Rask in the second period. Unfortunately for Luongo and his team, he also managed to injure himself while sprawling to keep the puck out of the net. An upper-body injury is what it was called and confirmed by the Florida Panthers Twitter account.
#FlaPanthers Roberto Luongo will not return to tonight’s game–upper body.
— Florida Panthers PR (@FlaPanthersPR) 27 Novembre 2014
The 35-year-old Montreal-native was holding onto a 6-5-5 record this season, and was 1-2-2 in his last five starts, his most outstanding performance of the stretch, coming in a 3-2 shoot-out loss against the Nashville Predators that saw Luongo pushing aside 48 of 50 shots before surrendering the winning goal to Filip Forsberg in the fourth round of the skills competition.
This season, despite posting a 2.40 goals against average, Luongo has a .926 save percentage, which is good for a top-5 position in the league. He has faced the 7th most shots among all goaltenders (497) and is 6th for saves made (460).
Playing in his second season back with his old club, Luongo holds on to several milestones. Among active goaltenders, he ranks first in games played (819), wins (379), shutouts (67) and saves (22,346). The netminder also moved up to 5th in the ranks of saves made, passing former Panthers goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck. Luongo also passed Vanbiesbrouck in the career wins category, placing him in 13th all-time.
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