Flashback: Roberto Luongo recalls his infamous 2007 bathroom break

Let's throw it back to when the man known as “Lou” gave us the inside story of an untimely incident during his career.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 2 years ago
Flashback: Roberto Luongo recalls his infamous 2007 bathroom break
Sportsnet

Former National Hockey League goaltender Roberto Luongo was known not only for his play on the ice, but for his colorful and humorous personality off of it. Despite no longer strapping on the pads in the world's greatest sports league, he continues to entertain fans through his social media account. 

We're going to go ahead and throw it back to one of his funniest posts when he commemorated the location of a rather embarrassing situation that had occurred years prior. 

Let's set the scene for those of you who may not remember. It's Game 5 of the Western Conference Semi-Finals, and Luongo's Vancouver Canucks find themselves trailing three games to one against the Anaheim Ducks. The Canucks have managed to take the Ducks to overtime, but fans and commentators alike immediately noticed something was off when backup goaltender Dany Sabourin skated into Vancouver's crease to start the overtime period. Speculation immediately began to run rampant that Luongo was dealing with some kind of undisclosed injury that he suffered during regulation. 

As it turns out, Luongo wasn't injured, but simply came down with an untimely case of the runs. 

“I started having stomach problems in the third period and usually, sometimes, it happens during a game, but they just go away. But once I got back to the locker room, I sat down and I was fine and I was just [going to] let it pass,” Luongo explained. “Once I stood up to get ready to go to the ice, which was three minutes before the intermission [ends], I went to the trainer and was like ‘I can’t, I can’t, I gotta go’.”

Canucks captain Markus Naslund came onto the ice prior to the start of overtime to speak with the referees to buy sometime, but the play started without Luongo.

“Bill McCreey was the [referee]. He’s like ‘Yeah, just go. We’ll wait for you,’ so I’m doing my business and all of a sudden, I hear the play starting and I’m in the bathroom. Needless to say I hurried up to get [back to the bench],” Luongo said.

Sabourin performed as well as anyone could have asked in Luongo's brief absence, stopping all five Ducks shots he faced before Luongo was able to re-enter the game. Unfortunately, Vancouver's season would indeed end that night at Honda Center, as defenseman Scott Niedermayer's shot from the point in double overtime eluded Luongo. 

Years later, Luongo decided to share with his Twitter followers the exact location of - as he put it, where the magic happened.