First, he was an escape goat. Now, he’s a disgruntled goat, at least according to the Florida Sun Sentinel.

Roberto Luongo remains down in Florida with his family, renting inflatable slides, wearing flippers, and hoping he never has to leave. He’s also gearing up for the next NHL season, whenever that will be, which means heading on over to the nearest NHL practice facility and getting some work in. In this case, that means visiting the home of the Florida Panthers.

As we know by now, Luongo would love it if these trips to the brutally named Saveology.com Iceplex were more than just visits. He wants to play there, and he said so again Tuesday. But for now his sighting there means no more than when local NHLers join the Canucks at Eight Rinks to find their legs before heading out every fall.

However, that hasn’t stopped the Sun Sentinel from doing their best to sensationalize every detail of this encounter they possibly can.

It’s a good thing this game started at 4:30 on the west coast, otherwise I would have fallen asleep. After the pulse-pounding action of Saturday’s victory in Boston, I had to keep my handy-dandy home defibrillator on hand throughout this game to make sure my heart didn’t stop out of sheer boredom.

Thanks to copious amounts of caffeine and and the early start, I watched this game.

Back on June 25th, at the 2010 NHL Entry Draft, the Canucks traded away Michael Grabner, Steve Bernier, and their 1st round pick to the Florida Panthers for defenseman Keith Ballard and forward Victor Oreskovich. The Panthers turned that first round pick into Quinton Howden, waived Grabner out of training camp, then waived Bernier recently [...]