I didn't mean to imply that your excellent piece was an endorsement of any kind. There's little doubt that in the traditional type of hockey fraternity, McGuire stands out as non-traditional, which is not a negative thing in itself, but in an old-boys macho environment, a "geek" would be fodder for ridicule and bias.
It's unfortunate that hockey is slow to escape the anti-intellectual atmosphere where self-proclaimed "fighters" get more latitude and respect than genuine thinkers.
I think McGuire is more in line with where the game is going, in terms of management profiles -- you're seeing more and more highly educated individuals acceding to positions of authority.
However, I'd argue that it's not what McGuire says as a broadcaster during games, most of it soundbytes packaged to fit limited time slots and made on-the-fly. I would challenge anyone to put out as much air time as McGuire does and not find contradictions. The examples given about how he says he's favoring one guy over another and is proven wrong pale in comparison to the ones he gets right. And in the end, it's all about batting average and prevailing over the most substantive decisions with more consistency than not. It's not about the time he said something about a particular player. Or about imputing to him assertions he's never made, like the one involving the Habs and Oilers and what he'd do if he were the Oilers and how a ton of Hab fans refer to the supposition to mean what he'd do if he were the Habs.
My contention with him is how he's not been involved within management and has not done his classes from within and spent any time in a GM's office. He would have made a fine assistant in my view, had he stuck to it and invested himself in that capacity, for a significant time. Him coming from the broadcast booth now would put him at a clear disadvantage. There is no sense drumming up pieces about who he allegedly was in 1994, one just needs to look at the path he's chosen and where he's at now. And now and probably for the rest of his career, he's a broadcaster, a good one at that and doesn't deserve any bashing for it.
Nor does he deserve to be exorcised for any consideration someone may give him as a GM candidate in a hypothetical -- you can't blame the guy for throwing his name into a hat whenever a team is canvassing for a new GM, but so what. He's done well for himself and even if he's never hired by an NHL team again, he's been influential in his own way, possibly way more than some GMs, certainly a ton more than a lame-ass nepotist like Bergevin will ever be.
