May 21, 1994 - General Manager Paul Holmgren did more to unify the Hartford Whalers than anybody in recent team history. Holmgren fired head coach Pierre McGuire after six months. It was more than a great idea. It was justice.As a first year assistant with the Hartford Whalers, McGuire told the team that "he would personally shut down Pittsburgh Penguins Center Mario Lemieux" in the October 17, 1992 contest. Lemieux' linemate Kevin Stevens scored four goals while Mario had only four assists.
In 15 years of covering the NHL, we had never seen a coach so universally disrespected and disliked within his own organization.
McGuire fancied himself two parts Scotty Bowman and one part Bob Johnson.
McGuire privately said after a game how he outcoached the other guy. It turned out to be a superhuman leap of faith on his part.
At 32, McGuire was the youngest head coach in the NHL. When a young man is so headstrong, so emotional, so calculating, such a control freak, so full of ambition and so full of himself, he will either rocket to the top or crash.
On the bench, players said McGuire would taunt the other team, saying he couldn't believe the opposing coach was allowing him certain line matchups. This braggadocio led Pittsburgh's Jaromir Jagr to mock McGuire. Pierre got Jagr for an illegal stick, and after Jagr jumped out of the penalty box, he scored on a breakaway. Although he had scored big goals in two Stanley Cup championships, Jagr called this overtime goal the biggest of his life because he humbled ``that know-it-all.''
After McGuire was fired, Whalers' Captain Pat Verbeek called it "the best thing that could have happened to the Whalers." He said that his teammates had no respect for McGuire and players would refuse to play if he were retained. In 1995, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman ruled that McGuire would forfeit half of the remaining salary owed to him by the Whalers for providing confidential coaching evaluations that had been prepared while employed by Hartford to the Edmonton Oilers.
McGuire became a scout with the Ottawa Senators, but the stint lasted only two months when the entire coaching staff was fired in January, 1996. He became the radio analyst for CJAD broadcasts of Montreal Canadiens games. When TSN re-acquired the Canadian national cable rights to NHL hockey in 2002, McGuire was hired as its lead hockey analyst.
McGuire joined NBC Sports after they acquired the rights to NHL games in 2006. He usually works as an "Inside the Glass" reporter with the lead broadcast team of Mike Emrick and Ed Olczyk. His hockey knowledge is seemingly endless. Pierre can rattle off almost every player’s college and juniors team. Also, he loves to add random facts about a players’ personal life.
Hockey players need strength, pain tolerance, endurance, explosive speed and maximum conditioning to endure the rigors of their sport. NHL players simply never coast. Despite all the demands the sport and coaches put on NHL players, it seems that hockey players, more so than other athletes, realize how lucky they are to play their sport professionally and relish the opportunity to put on a uniform and play before adoring fans.
And they hate that Pierre McGuire speaks for them.
Paul Murphy
Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy
No comments:
Post a Comment