As they watch their big brother from three time zones away sitting on the cusp of achieving his lifelong dream, St-Leonard's Leo and Fabio Luongo are not particularly surprised to see how well Vancouver Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo is performing in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
With just three wins over the Boston Bruins standing between the eldest Luongo brother and his first Stanley Cup, his little brothers still marvel at how he's able to perform when all the chips are down.
"He was always on top of his game because he was always very strong mentally," Fabio Luongo, the youngest brother, told CTV Montreal's Brian Wilde. "When the series or the game is on the line, he always finds a way to win. It's really unbelievable."
Luongo has done it on the Olympic stage in 2010, helping lead Canada to the gold medal in Vancouver. He's done it at the world championships, and he even did it in junior hockey when he led the Val D'Or Foreurs to the 1998 Quebec Major Junior Hockey League title.
The Stanley Cup playoffs are the final frontier for Luongo, and winning it would allow him to silence the critics who say he is unable to win the big one, no matter what his brothers say.
"That's why they're the best in the world, because they can get past that," Fabio Luongo said. "You have to live in the moment. That's what he's doing right now, not worrying about what other people think. Hopefully at the end of his career people will appreciate what he's done for the game."
Fabio, 25, runs the family restaurant, La Bella Italiana in St. Leonard which houses the most Vancouver Canucks fans per capita in Quebec everytime Roberto suits up.
The middle brother is Leo Luongo, 27, a goalie coach with the QMJHL's Acadie-Bathurst Titan who is not allowing himself to be swept up in the anticipation of his big brother being so close to his dream.
"We've got to take it one game at a time, just like players," Leo said. "You can't get ahead of yourselves. If you start planning parades and Stanley Cup parties, you almost jinx yourself. So we'll take it one day at a time and see what happens."
And while neither of his little brothers believe the critics Luongo has throughout the hockey world, Leo is able to recognize that his brother cleared a huge hurdle in these playoffs long before the Stanley Cup Final began with Roberto posting a 1-0 shutout in a Game 1 win on Wednesday night.
"The most nervous? It would have to be Game 7 against Chicago (in the first round), more than even the gold medal game," Leo said. "If he had lost that game it would have changed his whole career. He might have been out of Vancouver, his reputation might have been shattered. That was really nerve-wracking right until the very end, and when it was over I was really relieved, the most relieved I've ever been watching one of his games."
That degree of relief may very well be surpassed by the end of this series, if big brother Roberto is finally able to hoist that Cup above his head and win the only major championship that's eluded him.
