Pierre McGuire has gone from “Inside the Glass” to inside the Ottawa Senators‘ front office.
The Senators announced early Monday that McGuire, 59, has been hired as a senior vice president of player development. The former NBC hockey analyst, whose run with the network ended this month after 15 years, will work closely with general manager Pierre Dorion and team owner Eugene Melnyk.
“On behalf of the entire Senators organization, I would like to welcome Pierre McGuire back to Ottawa,” Melnyk said in a statement. “We are excited to add Pierre to our hockey management group. His experience will be instrumental as we continue to build an elite team. Pierre’s knowledge of the game and its players is highly regarded and I am confident that he will positively assist our team as it progresses to the next level.”
McGuire started in the NHL as a scout with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1990 and was an assistant coach in 1991-92 under Scotty Bowman when the Penguins won the Stanley Cup. McGuire moved over to the Hartford Whalers as an assistant coach, eventually adding assistant GM and head coaching duties to his resumé, leading the Hartford bench for the 1993-94 season (23-37-7) as the youngest head coach in the league at 32.
After that stint in Hartford, he was a scout for the Senators, briefly serving as assistant head coach in 1995-96.
McGuire is best known for his work as a TV hockey analyst, first with TSN in Canada and then with NBC when the network acquired the U.S. broadcasting rights deal in 2005-06. His extensive knowledge of players’ biographies and career trivia, and how often he’d tap into it during gameplay, made him both popular and divisive with viewers.
He was also a pioneer in the NBC’s “Inside the Glass” color commentary model, as NBC built a glass box between the benches to allow its analysts to have an ice-level view of the action and better access to coaches and players.
While working for NBC, McGuire sought to become a general manager in the NHL. He interviewed with the Montreal Canadiens, Penguins, Minnesota Wild and Tampa Bay Lightning for their vacancies, among others. McGuire was rumored as a contender for the Senators’ GM job back in 2011.