It’s Roberto Luongo week here in Vancouver, and that clearly wasn’t lost on Vancouver Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko, who debuted a new mask on Saturday night with a Luongo tribute painted on the side:
This isn’t the first time the Canucks’ starting netminder has honoured past franchise greats with a tribute on his equipment. In the 2021-22 season — what’s hopefully the last season where the Canucks wear the black skate jerseys just once — Demko donned an entire replica setup on Kirk McLean’s iconic gear setup:
“Yeah, there’s a lot that goes into it for me,” said Demko of his tribute to McLean. “I always try to be cognizant of who’s come before me and paid the wave for guys like me coming into the organization. I saw we were only wearing the jerseys once this year so I knew it was a good opportunity to kind of go all out with it. I ended up calling Kirk and asking his permission, I didn’t want to rub him the wrong way or anything. He’s a good guy and gave me the green light — a lot of detail went into it, I was working pretty hard with my gear company CCM making sure every detail was on point and lot of back and forth. Top to bottom, it was pretty awesome.”
This season, the first full season since the passing of the great Gino Odjick, Demko had a tribute of the fan-favourite painted on the back of his mask that he wears anytime the Canucks wear the black skate jerseys this season.
As such, it’s no surprise that Demko would be so on the ball with a Luongo tribute ready to go the week before the Canucks’ franchise leader in most goaltending categories and first ballot Hall of Famer is inducted into the club’s Ring of Honour later this week when the Florida Panthers visit Rogers Arena on Thursday.
After seeing the Luongo tribute on Demko’s mask, former Canuck goaltender Eddie Lack needed to get in on the fun. With the now-retired NHL goaltender, who these days is an Arizona-based realtor, is offering a free home in the Grand Canyon State to the first Canucks goalie to have the infamous “pooping Heritage Classic” photo painted on their mask. Here’s the photo Lack is talking about, taken from the 2014 Heritage Classic at BC Place, where Lack was given the starter’s net over Luongo by then head coach John Tortorella:
“First Canucks goalie to put pooping Heritage classic Eddie on his mask gets a free house from me in AZ,” Lack wrote in a tweet.
Your move, Casey DeSmith and Thatcher Demko.
As you can see in the tweet above (from Roberto Luongo’s Twitter account) both Lack and Luongo have joked about the bizarre ordeal and even more bizarre photo before. Luongo was traded on March 4th, 2014, just days after the Heritage Classic game that Lack got the start in.
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