"This is a roundabout way of saying the Canucks organization made the choice to cultivate a market, rather than a fanbase, one that was always more excited about discovering the next new thing than anything they can ever actually have. Most of them have already flipped their 518 square feet of glass in Coal Harbour and moved onto some emerging tech paradise in the Baltic. Which is itself a roundabout way of wondering how an opposing fan in Northern Alberta or on the fringe of one of the NHL’s demolition-derby markets wouldn’t despise the utter entitlement of people who inhabit such a place. And because he was the unwitting symbol of that Vancouver smugness, Luongo became the target. He came across as so uniquely fallible, and Canucks fans—so seldom the target of negative energy—seemed to absorb the abuse existentially. The great misconception is that Vancouver destroyed Roberto Luongo. The greater one, though, is that Luongo was somehow destroyed at all. Any high art done in Vancouver these past eight years was perpetrated by that merry prankster, Bobby Lu himself."—CHRIS KOENTGES (via How Roberto Luongo Saved Vancouver)
