The First To Go Fourth

A few years ago the finished basement of the Luongo home in St. Leonard, Que., near Montreal, was supposed to be for rent. Lina Luongo had looked at all that unused space and seen dollar signs. So she cleaned up the area and turned it into an efficiency apartment. The only problem was that when her eldest son, Roberto, gazed at the newly cleared area he saw what probably all Canadian boys would have seen: an indoor hockey rink. Before Mom could sign up a tenant, Roberto had donned his goaltending pads, younger brothers Leo and Fabio had brought in a net from the street and, playing in their sneakers, with a hard plastic ball, they had wrecked the place.

Windows were smashed, the carpet was torn up, and the walls had so many holes from errant shots that they looked like cheese graters. The boys would pick their favorite NHL teams and play a full-contact, seven-game Stanley Cup finals. The entire house would shake. One time Tony Luongo came home from his job as a truck driver and yelled downstairs for the game to stop; Roberto hollered back, "But Dad, someday I'm going to play in the NHL."

Last Saturday at the NHL draft in Pittsburgh, the 18-year-old Luongo was chosen fourth overall by the New York Islanders, the highest a goaltender has ever been selected. The Boston Bruins took Sault Ste. Marie center Joe Thornton from the Ontario Hockey League with the No. 1 pick, but it was the Islanders who made history with Luongo, a lanky and lightning-quick butterfly-style goalie who was named the top prospect in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in March. Now the kid who used to play hockey in the basement will be charged with helping the Islanders get out of the Atlantic Division cellar.

"Every goalie growing up dreams of being drafted by the NHL," said Luongo, who sat next to his mother in the Pittsburgh Civic Arena and playfully elbowed his younger brothers after his name was called. "My dream was to be chosen higher than fifth so that, maybe, I can help to change the philosophy on drafting goalies."

Before last Saturday no netminder had been selected higher than fifth—the Pittsburgh Penguins' Tom Barrasso was the last goal-tender taken in that slot, by the Buffalo Sabres in 1983—and in 28 years of the draft in its current form, only eight goalies had been taken in the top 10. It's a strange anomaly that in a sport dominated by goal-tending, no one playing that position has ever been selected No. 1, 2 or 3 (chart, page 55). Imagine the NFL never having a quarterback drafted in the top three spots.

"It's such an important ingredient to success in this league," says the Islanders' director of player personnel, Gordie Clark. "Yet every year a million teams are looking for goalies, and you want to say to them, 'You had your chance at the draft.' But for some reason people in this league will give young forwards and defensemen the benefit of the doubt, but not goalies."

One reason is that it's difficult to gauge from his junior hockey performance just how good a goalie really is. A prospect's stats might jump off the charts because he's stopping 50 pucks a night, when only a fraction of those shots are NHL-caliber. Also, players are drafted so young that they have not matured physically and mentally—a potential minefield for teams that draft goalies, who, upon reaching the NHL, face pressure as intense as any in sports. Finally, there is a significant turnover of coaches and general managers in the league, and draft mistakes tend to stick out like blue-haloed pucks on television. No one wants to bet his 401(k) on a teenage goalie, so teams fall back on safer, more conventional thinking.

Luongo's agent, Gilles Lupien, a former defenseman who won two Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens in 1978 and '79, says the attitude that has caused goalies to be ignored at the top of the draft is changing. "It used to be that you'd pick sides, and you'd put the last guy not picked, the fat guy with glasses, in net," he says. "Now these guys are the finest athletes in the game."

The 6'2", 185-pound Luongo fits into that category. When he took up the sport at age eight, he wanted to play goalie, but his parents demanded that he first learn how to skate. Three years later, after he was cut as a forward by his peewee team, Luongo became a netminder. At 15 he joined Montreal-Bourassa, a midget team known as the cradle of goaltenders for developing the New Jersey Devils' Martin Brodeur, the Toronto Maple Leafs' Felix Potvin, the Los Angeles Kings' Stephane Fiset and the Islanders' Eric Fichaud, among others. It was there, in a tiny, nondescript rink in northeast Montreal, that Luongo began to blossom. Under the direction of goalie coach Mario Baril and butterfly guru François Allaire, a longtime assistant coach with the Canadiens who is now a consultant with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Luongo honed his instincts around the net.

The mental part of the game, which some former goalies say amounts to 80% of the job, has always come naturally to Luongo. He speaks English, French and Italian and is cocky enough to yell at his teammates in all three languages. "I never put pressure on myself to the point where the game is no longer fun," he says. "It's always a challenge, but it's fun, not a job."