At forty years young, Florida Panthers goaltender Roberto Luongo is still mulling over whether to return for a 20th NHL season.
Luongo, who's the oldest goaltender in the NHL, and third-oldest player in the league, turned 40 on Thursday and spoke with The Associated Press on what his future holds ahead of what'll be his final start of the season on Saturday.
Signed for three more years at $5.2 million per season, Luongo has yet to make a decision and won't rush into making one given the question has been a hot topic in the hockey community.
"I don't really want to make any decisions over the course of a season," Luongo said.
"Obviously, there's a lot of emotions involved with that and you want to make sure that you make the right decision for all parties involved. I still love to play the game, and we'll see where it goes."
Luongo is top three all-time in games played, wins, saves and minutes and is still considered to be the Panthers' number one goaltender, having led them in starts and minutes played this season despite two stints on the IR with a knee injury.
But with all the rumours that the Panthers will be aggressive in signing Sergei Bobrovsky this summer, the former Vancouver Canuck doesn't want anyone to jump to conclusions that he's necessarily done with hockey. Last week, he took to Twitter in his regular humorous tone to shoot down a report that injuries will force him into retirement.
"The only thing that I don't really enjoy is when you see something that's completely fabricated," Luongo said. "That's the part that sometimes you're not too happy about. But that being said, I've been through it many times. I handled it the best way that I could by making a joke out of it, and I'm moving on from there."
Luongo currently has 489 wins to his name and could join Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy as the only goaltenders to reach that milestone.
The Montreal product is second all-time in save percentage (.919) to only Dominik Hasek with a minimum of 600 career games played.
