Goaltender Roberto Luongo chose to finish his career in Vancouver because he believes the Canucks can win a Stanley Cup. The 12-year, US$64 million contract extension he signed on Wednesday may help.
Luongo’s new contract comes with an annual salary cap hit of just US$5.33 million, which is down from the US$6.75 million average of his current four-year, US$27 million deal that expires at the end of the upcoming NHL season.
“I want to win the Stanley Cup,” Luongo said on a conference call. “That’s why I play. We had to do something that made sense for both me and the team, and I think that’s what we accomplished by doing a deal where the money is a bit more front-loaded.”
PHOTO: REUTERS
Luongo’s deal includes a no-trade clause, keeping the 30-year-old Canucks captain in Vancouver until the 2021-2022 season.
The new deal pays Luongo US$10 million in 2010-2011, but just US$1 million in each of the final two seasons to give the Canucks more flexibility under the NHL salary cap.
“For me it was more about my love for the game,” Luongo said. “I just want to play as long as I can. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
Luongo also plans to play for Canada at next year’s Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Last year, Luongo became the first NHL goalie in 60 years to be selected as team captain.
He was fourth in Vezina Trophy voting as the league’s top goalie.
He is 230-33-265 with a 2.57 goals-against average in 544 career NHL games. He led the Canucks to the second round of the playoffs in 2007 and 2009.
■JASON SMITH RETIRES
AP, OTTAWA
Ottawa Senators defenseman Jason Smith retired on Wednesday after playing in more than 1,000 NHL games.
The 35-year-old Smith scored only 41 goals during his career, but made his presence felt in other ways.
“Whether we ever got anything out of him offensively or not didn’t matter,” Senators general manager Brian Murray said at a news conference. “What I liked about Jason was his leadership and the grit he provided around the net.”
In 1,008 career games since 1993 with New Jersey, Toronto, Edmonton, Philadelphia and Ottawa, Smith had 169 points with 1,099 penalty minutes. He also appeared in 68 playoff games, recording 11 points.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier