Music: {allcanada} GILLIS STILL NOT SHOPPING LUONGO

Friday, June 1, 2012

{allcanada} GILLIS STILL NOT SHOPPING LUONGO

The Vancouver Province notes it's been reported in lots of different places that Canucks GM Mike Gillis has been contacting general managers around the league about the possibility of moving veteran goalie Roberto Luongo without yet having signed Cory Schneider. Not surprisingly, he insists that is absolutely untrue.

"I haven't contacted anyone with respect to Roberto at all," said Gillis on Thursday. "I've had people call me and ask about him and I've told them that we haven't made any decisions at all about the future of our goaltending. And that's absolutely the truth.

"We're going to have our pro scouts in over the next seven to 10 days, have our meetings and then we'll come out of that with a firm plan on how to move ahead."

Gillis has had one conversation with Luongo and over the next few days he'll have another on the phone with the goalie to see if he feels the same way as he did right after the season when they first talked.

"He basically said to me the exact same thing he said to you guys that if it [a trade] was something that would help the team, he'd consider it," said Gillis.

"But I'd like to get his feelings now that he's had a little time to think it over.

"There's no rush here. There's no need to get into anything too quickly because that's when you're likely to make a mistake.

"I was at the GMs meeting this week and you can ask all 29 other guys whether I talked to them about 'we haven't made any decisions at all about the future of our goaltending. And that's absolutely the truth. trading a goalie and they'd tell you 'no' because it just hasn't happened."

Gillis is confident of signing Schneider, which would be the first logical step in any procedure, and there's plenty of cap space to get that done — at least in the interim period between now and the Sept. 15 expiry of the old Collective Bargaining Agreement.