The Pierre MacGuire

Today I discuss my least favourite hockey personality of them all. Sure people like Nick Kypreos, Ron Maclean and Mike Milbury are insufferable but McGuire is just on another level or annoyance. Its been 2 years since he left TSN to focus full time on american networks Versus and NBC Sports where his statements of the obvious are  accepted by the casual fan rather than made fun of by the knowledgable (canadian) fan. It seems only yesterday that he was having full on orgasms for Dustin Tokarski and choosing one player during the World Juniors to have a full on man crush for (Claude Giroux) and another to repeatedly point out his deficiencies (PK Subban).

Great play-by-play commentators know when to speak and when to stay quiet. Harry Neale will always be my favourite for his funny comments and for knowing when he can add some insight to a situation and knowing when to let Bob Cole do his thing. Hell as a Sens fan I have to listen to Denis Potvin on a regular basis who is more likely to rant about his favourite flavour of yogurt than he is to tell you something about the actual hockey game, and yet I still prefer him to Macguire. Pierre never knows when to stop talking. He speaks about as much as the play by play guy and starts every sentence with first saying that play-by-play mans name. "Hey, Doc" or "Y'know Gord". Because he talks so much he rarely has anything insightful to say because not all situations during a hockey game require further analysis. Oh Crosby won a faceoff lets look at it further and talk about his hand position for 5 minutes.

Pierre also likes to start every replay of a goal with "This goal all starts with...". Now more often than not he is incorrect with how the goal started or the way the goal started was COMPLETELY OBVIOUS. "Y'know Gord this goal starts with this breakaway pass from Karlsson" Really Pierre? you don't think that was obvious enough even to someone who has never seen a hockey game???

Another Pierre habit: Starting every sentence with "You talk about..." and then continuing the sentence to talk about something I have never heard anyone talk about before. "Hey, Doc you talk about quick, efficient 3 man line changes on the fly". Actually Pierre no one has ever talked about it before because it really does not occur to fans that line changes require any attention during a game (exception: too many men penalties).

I have never liked having the colour commentator at ice level between the benches. It really serves no purpose because they don't supply any new perspective to the viewers than they would if they were in the booth. This seems like a good point to say that Ray Ferreiro and Mike Johnson are terrible TV personalities and should be replaced on TSN. Anyways, the guy between the benches is made even worse by Pierre by pointing out 5 times a game that a team should have gotten a two many men penalty. Not only does he point it out he absolutely FREAKS OUT about it. Relax Pierre chill. I'm pretty sure Pierre has a "word of the day" calender with him between the benches. He consistently uses obscure adjectives to describe a play or a player. Words that I'm pretty sure are made up or words that are so obscure that nobody would notice if he used them wrong. And I'm pretty sure he's using them wrong.

Anyways all this to say that Pierre McGuire sucks. Now I will return to watching the Pens-Bruins game on mute so I don't have to listen to him.