The Vancouver Canucks will be without star goaltender Roberto Luongo for at least a week due to a hairline fracture in his ribs, several news outlets reported Wednesday.
Luongo suffered the injury stopping a shot in Saturday's 2-0 win over Edmonton, his fifth straight game allowing two goals or less. He aggravated it in Tuesday's 5-4 loss to Detroit, when he had a second-period collision with Todd Bertuzzi.
"It kinda hurt but the adrenaline was going so I was able to finish the game (Saturday)," Luongo told reporters. The next day (in practice) it was a bit uncomfortable but I was able to play through it."
Luongo said he has had a previous rib injury that sidelined him "a week or a week and a half."
"There is no definite timeline, because it's really about the amount of pain that you've got there," Luongo said. "I'm definitely not playing these next two games."
Since joining Vancouver in 2006, Luongo is 121-70-22 with a goal-against average of 2.37. He was off to a lukewarm start this season but had won six of his last eight starts before the loss to Detroit.
Luongo's backup is journeyman Andrew Raycroft, who has stopped 16-of-17 shots in limited action this season. The Canucks probably will recall Cory Schneider from Manitoba of the AHL to back up Raycroft.
Vancouver plays back-to-back games at Los Angeles on Thursday and Anaheim on Friday. They return home for two games before back-to-back road games Nov. 5 and 6 at Minnesota and Dallas, the start of a five-game trip.
The Canucks already are without forwards Daniel Sedin (broken foot), Pavol Demitra (shouler surgery) and Ryan Johnson (neck) and defenseman Sami Salo (knee).
"You don't replace a Robert Luongo, you don't replace a Daniel Sedin," coach Alain Vigneault said. "We have a big challenge in front of us here. We're playing a lot of games in a few nights."
Vancouver is 6-6 straight up, against the spread and against the total. The Canucks are -115 in the money standings.