Empty Netters Podcast - How Pierre McGuire Became the NHL's Most Famous Voice Between The Glass

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

The legend himself joins the pod to talk about his incredible NHL journey. A three sport athlete in college, Pierre played pro hockey in Europe before deciding to try out coaching. NCAA D3 jobs for no money took him all the way to the youngest head coach in the NHL. Then he pivoted again into the world famous broadcaster that every hockey fan knows. And of course, the guys had to ask what it was like working with Doc.  ENTER OUR SWEEPSTAKES HERE! https://try.gooddaymood.com/sweepstakes-1/ NEW EPISODES EVERY MONDAY & WEDNESDAY! PRESENTED by BetMGM. Download the BETMGM app and use code “NETTERS” and enjoy up to $1500 in bonus bets if you lose your first wager!  SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS: BAUER. Bauer is the go to destination for all your training needs. Head to http://www.bauer.com/training to explore tools like the Digital Reactor Danger for stickhandling or the Reactor Slide Board to add strength to your stride.  CASHAPP. Download CashApp and take control of your finances! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cash-ap... RIKI. Head to https://rikispirits.com/ to find out where to get RIKI near you. Follow @friday.beers and @rikispirits to stay up to date with upcoming RIKI contests and giveaways   FUNKAWAY. To check out the full family of FunkAway products go to http://www.funkaway.com to learn more funk’in cool stuff. And head over to Amazon right now and grab FunkAway products with just a few clicks.  FIREBALL . Fireball’s iconic cinnamon flavor tastes fire and goes down easy, making it the ultimate crowd pleasure. Go pick up some from your local liquor store and join us in drinking Fireball during our game days this season! #IgniteYourRivalry  EVERYMANJACK. Give Every Man Jack a shot today and go to http://www.everymanjack.com and use code “NETTERS” at checkout for 25% off your first order  CBDMD. Visit http://www.cbdmd.com to explore their extensive range of products and find the perfect solution for your needs. Don’t forget to use code “FRIDAY” at checkout to get 30% OF + Free Shipping.  DOLLAR SHAVE CLUB. Dollar Shave Club products are now available everywhere, so you can order from their website, Amazon, or get them at your favorite retailer near you. Visit their site right now for 20% off $20 or more, and get your products delivered right to your door. Visit http://www.dollarshaveclub.com/netters and use promo code NETTERS for 20% off $20 or more  CHOMPS. If you are looking for the PERFECT on the go snack that has zero grams of sugar and packed with high quality protein, then Chomps is for you. To learn more about Chomps, click here! http://www.chomps.com/emptynetters 00:00 Intro 07:37 After college coaching 22:57 Playoffs 32:38 Head coaching job 47:26 Broadcasting 1:00:14 Olympics  1:08:23 Games Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I loved you doing the impression earlier. We would always joke, especially some of those electric playoff games. Anytime a game was buzzing and someone would ring one off the bar and you'd hear that doc, Fires off the crossbar. Ice is ready and we are back with another episode of the Entenetters podcast brought to you by BetMGM. And we have an incredibly special guest interview today with the Pierre Maguire. I am not kidding. Could have talked for 10 hours.

Dude, and you knew that was going to happen, Dan. like legitimately because people little behind the scenes people will ask us when we're when we're getting guests that oftentimes are like how long you know and we're like well you know the episodes are about an hour but sometimes it's you're you're you're stretching to get an hour sometimes they have to go so we do it quick whatever this one I legitimately felt like we were going to have to set alarms to make sure we didn't do a 10 hour episode honestly Chris and it's pier's become a great friend and I just can't I mean you'll find it out you'll find it out in this interview but I cannot stress enough how good of a person, Pierre is.

I mean, it's just from the just chatting casually when we talk about random hockey stuff to scheduling this episode, just the kindness and the example of a gentleman that he is, is remarkable. The highlight for me, the untold Mario Lemieux stories out of this world. Dude, I feel like we hear all, we hear so much about Wayne, we hear so much about Yager. Mario is a Mount Rushmore guy. And for some reason, I feel like there are just stories that we've never heard. And Pierre unlocking some of those was remarkable.

Because he's with him right in some of those peaks, dude. And then, Dan, I died at the Phil Kessel back. Everybody knows the famous Phil Kessel. How's your Breath interview? And just this story about what happened after that killed me. Dude, so funny. We don't want to spoil anything else. Let's get right into this interview.

Enjoy this episode with Pierre Maguire. Today we are thrilled to be joined by, let's just say, a New Jersey Montreal native, a three-sport athlete at Hobart College, former coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Hartford Whalers, and Ottawa Senators, a famous TV broadcaster where you know him from his color commentary on TSN and Inside the Glasswork on NBC, just to name a couple. He's written for Sports Illustrated. He's covered several Olympic games. He's an Emmy winner for outstanding sports personality and a two-time Stanley Cup chair.

champion with the penguins. Pierre McGuire, welcome to the Empty Netters podcast. Dan, you're hired. Boom. That was my audition. That was my audition. It's so great to hang with you and Chris.

Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. Best of the season to you and your families. Right back at you, Pierre. Yeah. We're so pumped to have you on. This has been a long time coming. We could not begin to express how excited we are.

Yeah, I was jacked up and I got your notes. I'm really excited to be with you guys. Hell yeah. And, Pierre, tell everyone where you're coming. calling from right now. We're all East Coast boys actually. I know you guys are in the great state of Maine, not far from Bowden College where my brother Ryan played for Terry Mahar

there, and I'm up in Montramla, Quebec. So I'm a little bit north of Montreal, about 100 miles north of Montreal. Yep, and it's the, we picked the wrong season. It's the cold time of year to be here. But the good news is, I see Santa Claus at night. Like, I see him doing his practice runs

here. There you go. Yeah. Up to the mountain, it's good. Out there's the practice facility. That's fantastic. Pierre, I want to start. Dan mentioned the Hobart College three sport athlete thing, and I think almost everyone listening will know that you were a hockey player there. You played pro in Europe for a little bit.

You're part of the devil's system after that before you launched into your coaching career. But not only were you a standout defenseman at Hobart, but you pitched on the baseball team and played quarterback, which is unbelievable. So can you tell us what that was like? did you sleep in college? And were those, where did those rank in terms of how much you loved the sports compared to hockey? You know, I was really lucky. When I was 15 years old, there was a high school in New Jersey called Burden Catholic High School,

which just won their four straight championship in the state football championship in New Jersey. They beat Don Bosco. Really, I'm a proud Burden Catholic alumni. I played for a living legend. He's still alive, Tony Carstitch. And he was my quarterback. And I would say to this day, the guys I played football was Chris and Dan at Burden Catholic. Catholic are probably the best friends I have in all

sport. Wow. Oh, wow. And so they're just amazing guys. John Rice is an attorney in San Diego. Joe Bosalina works in New Jersey. Joey hire works in New Jersey. I can go down the line. Jimmy Gallagher. There's so many. John Feaster. All these guys, we have this probably 12 or 13 person texting

we do all the time. I'm still in touch with all those guys. But in terms of college, I didn't sleep a lot. I played for a great football coach there, by the way. He's no longer with us. Jack. I'm not kidding. His name is Jack Daniels. His daughter, Donna actually works and runs a building in Oakland where the Golden State Warriors played. No way. So, yeah.

Donna's been an amazingly successful NBA and NHL executive for a long time. So I played for her father up at Hobart, good friends with a lot of guys in the team, but football hockey and baseball are close to me. I've always been a huge hockey guy, but I got to tell you guys, I love football. I love everything. Yeah, okay. It's pretty great. That's, yeah, that was going to be my interesting question because usually the hockey guys can play some of the spring sports because it's after the season or whatever. But football, you know, you're putting yourself through the ringer right before hockey started, so you don't see that very often.

No, my body will tell you now at 63 years of age, it might not have been such a good decision to play. But anyways, it is what it is. You just keep moving along. That's incredible. So who's your NFL team, Pierre? You're going to die laughing. When I was a kid growing up, we didn't get a lot of cable TV. In fact, we didn't have any cable TV up here.

So believe it or not, the New York Giants. And I grew up watching Tom Brookshire and Pat Summerall who were phenomenal together. They were one of the best announcing duos of all time. And we usually see the Giants Against the Eagles, Giants against the Redskins. There was a team, believe it or not, called the St. Louis Cardinals back then. And, you know, they obviously moved to Arizona. Yeah. But so I watched them a lot.

And then the Dallas Cowboys. So that Eastern Division of the NFC was just so barbaric. But I was always a Giants fan and still am, and I hope the Maras can get it right this time. Well, you know, you're going to be able to celebrate Pierre because we are Patriots fans, so you've got the upper hand on us here. Which is rare. Rito, rarely is a Pats fan.

Am I in the punching bag? But we are today. It's very, very true. When you were doing the three sports, I mean, that one particularly, football to hockey, was that ever just too much? Or were you just loving every minute of it every second? You know what's really cool about it, Dan? would have football practice in the afternoon, and then I could, all my class were in the morning,

I could get to hockey. The coach at the time, Bill Turner scheduled the practices a little bit later. I'm going to say like 5, 5.30. So I could kind of get to the rink on time. So I was double dipping most of the week. And back then, we were in Division 2 in hockey. They didn't start, I'm just trying to do the math here. They usually didn't start until like October 8th or October 9th or 10th. So there really wasn't a lot of crossover, believe it or not back then. It's a little different now. You know, you could never do it now. I was going to say, I feel like these days, I mean, the D2, D3 hockey programs, you start doing fall skate in October.

So, you know, you're toast. Yeah, it would be hard. It'd be hard to do. Speaking of, you know, schools like Hobart and things like that, you know, your early coaching days is super fascinating to us because I feel like a lot of players take a little while to get into coaching. But you after college, you moved on, you had some situations with the devils. You realized you weren't going to make the NHL team

and it was going to be heading back to Europe. And you said enough is enough. You wanted to early pivot to coaching. And you said so many times about how much you love coaching, how much you love working with players and seeing young players develop and things like that. But you start in NCAA. You went to Hobart and you're making $400 a year,

substitute teaching on the side for $50 a day. Then Babson for three years, which, by the way, alumni over here. And then St. Lawrence for two. So amazing start to your coaching career. We want to hear about all those crazy stories. But also, I'm super curious. Did you love it right away or was there that transition period for you going from player to coaching,

wondering still, is this the right path? Do I like this? Do I have a career in this, a future in this? What was going through your head that whole time? I was addicted right from the start. I was the total addict. And I needed it. I was mainlining on being at the rink and being working with players.

It was cool. I got a chance of a gentleman by. the name of Bill Greer, who just retired, by the way. He's living in Canada, Degu, New York, which is a beautiful part of New York State. It's right near the top of the Finger Lakes. It's a real nice place. So Bill hired me, and he said, I can't pay you a lot. And I was like, well, how much?

He goes, 400. I said, okay. He says, well, we'll give you a meal ticket. It was a pretty cool deal. We give you a meal ticket to the cafeteria. We'll pay for your rent, which was kind of neat. And we'll give you a car to go recruiting. So I said, okay, so what I did was I took the 400, used the meal card, obviously the rent,

in the car and substitute taught for $50 a day at the Geneva High School in Geneva, New York. And then on Sundays, I work at a place called Ronnie Cedar Inn. And Ronnie's still living. They're the biggest Notre Dame fans. All the guys, I've been back there so many times. It is the most awesome bar. It's at the top of the hill for those that know it in Geneva, New York. And it's still there.

And it's Notre Dame everywhere. Love that. It's awesome. And Ronnie Schneider is the proprietor there. His son works there now, but he treated me so well, and I'm so grateful for his friendship, and that gave me a lot of extra money. I felt rich when I left there, you know? It was doing better than the teaching.

The teaching was good, though. It was back then 50 bucks a day. Like, this was 1984. It was pretty good. Like, that was going right in the pocket. It was pretty good. And I wasn't married. I didn't have children.

But the long story of is, at the end of that season at the NCAA coaches convention, Steve Sterling, who ended up being a head coach in the NHL with the New York. Eric Anders approached me and he said, look, I'm leaving Providence College. He had just taken his team to the NCAA. I'm going back to Babson, and I would love to have you join me. And I did, and I stay there for three years, three amazing years. I learned so much working for Steve and being at Babson, and our teams were good. I don't know if you guys know, but our teams were really good back then. Our best player was Tommy Saso, drafted by the Quebec Nordiques. he won the Hobie Baker back-to-back years, two years in a row,

was a Division III player. He was an awesome player. We had so many good players. And then at the end of my third year in the spring, I had six Division I had six Division I offers. And Ray Sherrill, who's a former general manager in the league with Pittsburgh and obviously in Jersey, he has a St. Lawrence alum. And he says, we're driving to St. Lawrence because I know they're one of the teams that

offered you. And I only went to one other school after that. I signed at St. Lawrence right away because of Joe Marsh. Joe Marsh is the most amazing guy in the history of college hockey. I love him to death to this day. He lives in Maine, you guys, just so you know. He's up in Maine. Yeah, yeah, he lives in Maine.

And so I was there. And then this gentleman approached me. My first year at St. Lawrence, his name is Scotty Bowman. And he said, if I ever go back to the NHL, I want you to come with me. And a year later, he called me up and I left. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup

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His daughter applied there because of Mike Keenan. It's an amazing story. So Mike Keenan's a St. Lawrence alum. Mike Keenan's first pro job was with the Rochester Americans, which was Buffalo's farm team. Scotty Bowman hired him to coach. So when Scottie was looking for a school for his daughter, he called Mike up.

And Mike was coaching in Philly then. And Mike says, you've got to go look at St. Lawrence. It's in New York State. Yeah. So Scottie was. up there and he was kind of in between jobs. He was doing a little bit of work for hockey night and Canada. He just been let go by Buffalo. And he watched practice and one day he just walked in the room and he said, can I talk to him? I'm like, holy smoke. Because you were running the

practice, right? Yeah. I'm like, holy smokes. This is Scotty Bowman. I'm like, he goes, hi, Scotty and Bowman. I said, sir, I know you are. Yeah. Well, Pierre, I got to ask when you were doing all this because you've always been so great at assessing young talent and that must have been such a huge part of your job while you were doing the college gig. When you were doing that, was the idea of NHL coaching always in your mind, or were you just taking it a step at a time? Step at a time. I never even thought I'd have an opportunity in the pros.

I never did. I had pro teams asked me to come scout for them, but I wanted to stay more on the coaching side. And when Scotty approached me, he said, this is going to be an all-encompassing job. It's going to be scouting. It's going to be development. It's going to be working with our pro team. And, you know, in 1990, the Pittsburgh Penguins missed the playoffs, man. and people don't realize Craig Patrick took over as a general manager.

He's so smart. He's one of the smartest men I've ever met in hockey. And he hired Bob Johnson, the late Bob Johnson. He hired Scotty Bowman. He hired Barry Smith, and they hired me. And we came in together as a group. And I'll never forget one of the first meetings we had as a group was at the Pan Pacific Hotel in downtown Vancouver. One of the nicest hotels right in the water in downtown Vancouver.

And we were in the boardroom. And I couldn't believe how intense it was. Like, this is so perfect for me. I love this. But I just shut my mouth because I was petrified because I'm looking at all these icons in the room. Like, you just shut up. You don't say anything. So it was really cool.

Yeah, I never thought he'd get a chance in the pros. But Scotty gave me an opportunity. So did Craig and Bob and the rest of history. And was that, Pierre, was that just a what is happening moment for you when you find yourself in the NHL? And was it, I imagine the answer is no, but was it a hard decision at all to leave college, which you've been falling in love with? It wasn't hard to leave college, Chris. it really wasn't. I'll tell you what my come to Jesus moment was when training camp started in

Pittsburgh. So it would have been the spring or the fall of 90. I was walking from the old Vista Hotel, which is now a Weston in Pittsburgh. I was walking from the hotel by myself up to the old igloo, which doesn't exist anymore. And I just was thinking, I can't believe I'm walking in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in September when I should be in Saskatchewan recruiting and scouting. and I'm actually going to an NHL training camp. This is unbelievable. So that was my like real moment where I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm here. You better not screw this up, you know, and they tried not to.

And how was that? Because everybody has this in their jobs, right? But that imposter syndrome where you're like, this was a mistake, I don't belong here. Was it tough to kind of overcome that or do you just trust your instincts? I trusted my, that one I wasn't afraid. I'll tell you what. We talked about football before. I'll never forget.

I was 15, turning 16. And I was at Burden Catholic's first practice. And my parents were up in Canada. And I call my dad of them like, why the hell did you send me here? Like these guys are way better than me. I have no shot at this. And then, you know, I don't know, a week or two later, I was a starting quarterback. But I'm telling you, that was, you talk about imposter syndrome?

I was like, I don't belong here. These guys are way bigger. They're way better. They're way faster. And I don't have this experience. Yeah. Once you see that, it's funny. Have you ever seen the movie The Natural?

Yes. We always quote that. Hobbs, that's my boy. Yeah. We always quote that line, welcome to the majors, Mr. Hobbs. And I feel like you had five,

welcome to the majors moments in like two years. I'll tell you what, though, the Pittsburgh one was cool, though, Dan. It really was. It was cool.

Just Mario LeMuse on that team. You know what I mean? Paul Coffey's on that team. You look at Joey Mullins on that team. Kevin Stevens in his prime is on that team. Mark Recky's on that team. Johnny Cullen's on that. Like,

I can go down the line all the guys. then you got to remember in the spring of 91 Craig Patrick did some brilliant stuff and one of them was he traded the late Zarli Zalapski he traded Johnny Cullen and he traded a kid named Jeff Parker who played at Michigan State to the Hartford Whalers for Alfie Samuelson and Ronnie Francis and Grant Jennings Wow that totally changed a dynamic for one franchise Pittsburgh

and it really set another franchise back And that's not a knock on the guys that were traded the other way. But you lost Ronnie and Alfie. Those were massive presences in the Hartford community. And it was unbelievable. So then little did I know two years later, I would leave Pittsburgh to go to Hartford. Yeah, yeah. That's so good.

What's funny, Pierre, you mentioned in Pittsburgh, like you just said, you're there. You have that moment of holy smokes. Like, I don't want to mess this up. Here I am in the NHL. You get on this team. You've got Paul Coffey. Like you said, Brian Trotier, Recky. you got a teenage Yarmor Yager, you got Mario.

You guys win back-to-back cups. We always talk about it is so hard to win a Stanley Cup. When you're with that team, with that organization, all these great people with Bowman and everyone like that, did you think you had a shot at back-to-backs, or was it such a difficult task you never even imagined it? Whenever Scotty or Bob or Craig were around, we always felt that way as a management team

and with the players we had, we really felt we could do it. The tragic part of that year was after we won the Cup in 91, there was a Canada Cup that summer. And the late Badger, Bob Johnson got diagnosed with brain cancer. He was actually having lunch with his team USA staff at a place called the 17th Street Cafe on the south side of Pittsburgh. And he was a practical joker and he was eating his soup and all of a sudden he went down in the soup. And the guy thought he was messing around. He wasn't messing around. So they brought him the hospital.

Bob was really one of my true mentors. I can't even begin to tell you guys. He treated me like I was an extension of his family. So grateful for the time I was around him. And anyways, he got rushed to the hospital. They did this experimental surgery on him. I think it was called a Swedish gamma ray, if I remember correctly. And at the hospital, was right across the street from the igloo at Duquesne.

So for those that know Pittsburgh, they know exactly where the Duquesne Medical Center is compared to where the Igloo was. real close walking distance. Badger liked glazed donuts. So I would go up there really early because he couldn't talk and he communicated everything on a blackboard. He'd write on the blackboard. No way. So I'd walk with these donuts. I don't know if they were from Dunkin' Donuts or a Donuts, I'll forget. And I walk in and I would hold because he couldn't chew, he couldn't move his mouth and I'd hold the donut and he would lick the frosting off the donut. It was just see him smile. It was awesome. It was just surreal. here's a man that three months earlier was hoisting the Stanley Cup over his head,

and now he's in a hospital bed and probably not a very good chance to survive. And I think about a month and a half later, he passed away. So we kind of lost our perspective as a group for a while because of that, but then we got it back. And that team was really good. That 92 team, oh, my gosh. It was crazy good. And then Craig again worked his magic.

And it's not a knock on Paul Coffey or Mark Rekke. You heard two good friends of mine. But we traded those two guys at Philadelphia. Philadelphia for Shell Sammis and Kenny Reagan and Rick Tocket. And Dickie, that's his nickname, Rick Toggett. Dickie was off the charts, boys. I'm just telling me, off the charts. Yeah.

That dude is tough. He's a hockey man. He fit in so well with our team. I don't think he'd mind me telling you this. I know I'm rambling on, but I got this is great. Pierre, go. This is great. So we're back in the day, you'd fly from, we're no private planes for teams back then.

you flew commercial. And we were in a hub city, Pittsburgh, U.S. Air. So we would fly to Montreal and we'd fly, believe it or not, I'm not kidding you. Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Syracuse, Montreal. Okay. So we're talking like 35-minute flights, but you had to land and then pick up some more people and take off again. So we get, I always gave out the per diem envelopes. And we were going on a pretty substantial road trip.

So we get to Syracuse. And back then there weren't a lot of ATMs. In fact, I don't even know if there were ATMs. ATMs. Yeah. So all of a sudden, Dickie, Rick Talker, comes out and he says, hey, can I get in advance? Because Scottie never let me give out the entire per diem and catch the guy got traded.

He didn't want to leave with all the money. Oh, you're on the road trip. Like, that's what it was like back then. I'm just telling you. So Rick comes up to me and he says, hey, coach, I'm a little light. What do you mean? I just gave your envelope because I lost it playing cards. I said, he says, I lost all my per diem playing cards between pitch.

Pittsburgh and Syracuse. It was like a 30 minute. 30 minutes. So I was like, okay, Dickey. And I went to Scott. He said, can I give talk to the right? He says, yeah, give it to him. Don't worry about.

We're not trading him. We just got. He's safe. That's unbelievable. That team was unbelievable. The leadership, the passion, the unity, and Rick Tock had fit in right away, like unbelievably. Yeah.

You go down the roster and it's just like, you see, it's like Hall of Fame, Hall of Fame, of fame. And as someone who's always had such a good eye for a young hockey talent, did you know immediately with Yager? I mean, he's a teenager and obviously he's a high pick brought in. But were you looking at him playing going, this guy's all time? So this is a good story too. You guys know, you just call me. We're doing this show. First overall was Owen Nolan. Second overall was Peter Ned Bed. Third overall was Keith Primo to Detroit. Fourth was Mike Ritchie. and then they come to Pittsburgh and I'll never forget walking over that morning

Scotty goes, are you sure? Are you sure about Yarm or Yager? Because back then, a lot of people weren't going to the Eastern Block and the wall was still up. I'm just telling you. Oh, yeah, right. God. So I'm like, Scotty, I've seen him a lot and I'm just telling you, he's the best player in the draft.

Like, I don't know if we're getting them or not, but I told him that the night before and then we were walking over it was, you better be sure or this could be the shortest career history. Yeah, back to Babson. See you right? Yeah. So anyways, we took Yarmir at five, and this was the brilliance of Craig Patrick.

He didn't let him go home. Oh, wow. He kept him in Pittsburgh. And Craig flew over with money to pay the transfer fee because he knew all those people from the 1980 Olympics. Craig Patrick was so good in so many different things. He never got enough credit for it. But that's, we knew Yarmour was going to be really good right out of the gate, boys. I'm just telling you.

He was so special. He was so special. That's incredible. And Pierre, those two teams, you guys really got rolling once the playoffs got going. You know, I think the first round, both years, was seven games. And then after that, I mean, there's 92, you swept the last two rounds. So did you get the sense of that in the locker? And once you guys kind of got past the first round, you're like, all right.

You know, you know, it was amazing. 92. People forget Mario had his handbroken. Adam Graves slashed him in game one at Madison Square Garden. So Mario didn't come back until the, third round and late in the third round. The Pittsburgh Penguins in 1992 are the only team you guys can check this out. And still, I don't think anybody will break that record. The only team to win 11 straight games to win the Stanley Cup. So when you look at it, they have a seven

game series with Washington. And I'll tell you a story about that in a second. But they won the last four games of the, or the last three games of the Ranger series, four straight against Boston's, four straight against Chicago. But the magic, the magic of the first round was Scotty Bowman and Mario Lemieux. Dino Cicerelli shredded our team bad in Pittsburgh in game four. Like bad. I'm just telling you, we got lit up like a Roman candle. He crushed it. I think he had four goals. So we went from being an aggressive 2-1-2-4-checking team to a passive one-four delay because we're getting beat up the ice by Callie Johansson and Ally Afraidy and Silvan Cote and even Kevin Hatcher.

Like those four guys shredded us. They shredded our team. And they made it an easy game for guys like Cicerelli to play who was such a good player. So we changed. So their D couldn't beat us up the ice. Yeah. But Scotty says,

we're not telling the guys to do this. We're going to have Mario do this. So we check into our hotel in Landover, Maryland, the Greenbelt Marriott. And all the old NHL guys and know exactly what I'm talking about. All the team stayed there, the Green Belt Marriott. Because Landover was way outside of Washington. Washington. And we brought Mario up to Scotty Suite and we kind of showed them how we wanted to play this. And he goes, don't worry, boys, I got this. So the next morning, the coaches never went in the dressing room. It was Mario Lemieux that gave him the game plan for the rest of the series. Turn the whole thing around too. Yeah, turn everything around. But that's, that was the brilliance of Scottie Bowman. The brilliance was he empowered one guy. He knew the players were tired of the coaches. They weren't tired of Mario. He knew they weren't tired of Mario. He knew they weren't to Mario.

I feel like we don't. I mean, there's so many stories of Mario out there, but I mean, now, today's day and age, we don't hear that many stories, as much as Wayne's stories, at least. Was he just the ultimate leader and the ultimate teammate? He didn't have to say much. I have so many Mario ones that are great that people would never know, but one of them involves training camp in 1992, 91, 92 season of year we won the cup again. So I took, Bob was in the hospital, Scotty took half the team to play an exhibition game

against the islanders. There were no cell phones. We flew commercial to Denver. The whole team was getting together in Vale, Colorado. That was Bob's ID. He wanted us training at altitude. Oh, wow. So we get in late, and I go to a payphone in the old airport in Denver. It wasn't the new one now. It was the old one near downtown.

So I go on the pay phone. I call Craig up, and I say, Craig, we're like two and a half hours late. Do you want the guys to practice? You know, I'm just a young guy. I don't want to overstep my bounds. He goes, you better. I said, where is Scotty? He goes, he's on Long Island at the Marriott. So I call him. Scotty, it's pure. Yeah. What do you want me to do? He says, you get those guys in the ice.

So I had been around Scotty enough to know. So I went to Mario on the bus. And I said, hey, A, he says, nicknames, Jason. I said, hey, A's, we got to practice today when we get to Vail. He goes, if you get us food, I guarantee you we'll practice. So here we go. We stop at the side of the road cafe like McDonald's or Wendy's. I don't even know what it was. was. And you see these gigantic guys strutting in going to get their hamburgers or whatever. You ask any player that was there, Paul Coffey, Covey, anybody that was at that rinkin' veil, that night, Mario put on a show. Some guys never seen him play like that. Oh, my God. It was unbelievable. And I'm just blowing the whistle watching this going,

this is unbelievable. And nobody, you know how everybody tapes everything now? Yeah. There's nobody there tape than anything. I wish there would have been. It was unbelievable how good he was. God. So good. I was going to get to get him a Big Mac before every playoff game. That's amazing. That's fantastic. Babes, by now you know we have teamed up with BetMGM for the entire season because BetMGM is without a doubt the best online sports book in the biz.

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You can find one. It's the holiday. See if you can get your hands on one. You'll come out in 2025. Absolutely sniping. Quick break because it's fireball time. It's ignite the rivalry time. And you know what that means. We got all kinds of NHL action coming up. Winter Classic coming up tomorrow night.

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D.P. is kind of like a fireball Dr. Pepper guy, which I can get down with. I don't even mind it on the rocks. You'd get this a chilled shot for me, and it really just takes my night right into the place where I want it to be, launches me off to have a great time with my friends. So that's what I'm talking about, fireball whiskey, ignite that rivalry and enjoy the winner classic. So Pierre, after after Pitt, you leave to like you said, to go to Hartford. First as the assistant and then you get bumped up to the head coaching job. And we don't even have to link. on the Hartford thing that much. I'm just curious, and maybe it takes you back to your high school football days, but 32 years old, man, youngest head coach in the NHL. That must have been an insane

feeling. What's going through your head then? I was actually over in Europe scouting. They had named me assistant general manager because Brian Burke, who had hired me, had gone to work for Gary Bettman. Gary was new at the league. So Brian left, and Paul Holmgren, who was also the head coach, took over as general manager. So we had a player by the name of of Andre Nicolition that we owned. And we had back in those days, I think you had to get the player signed by December 1st. And if you didn't, he couldn't play for you in the spring. So Nicolition was really good.

He was a really, really good player. Never really did that in Hartford, but he did it in Washington. He was an outstanding player. So I went over to try to get him signed. And along the way, I also did some scouting. And I think I was in Ooster, Sun, Sweden. I'm pretty sure that's where I was. And the phone rang.

Again, no cell phones. Yeah. And it was Paul and Kevin Maxwell from Hartford, and they said, I'm going to step down, and we want you to come back and be the head coach. I'm going to focus on my GM responsibility. So I did. I came back and coached. And the first 20 games, you guys can look it up.

We had the third best record in the NHL. And then we got decimated. We went on a West Coast trip, L.A., Anaheim, San Jose, and then came back and played in Boston. Like, that's how it was back in the day, a crazy trip. Commercial, yeah. Yeah, all commercial. And believe it or not, TWA actually existed. We were flying TWA a lot.

That's so funny. And we lost like four or five key players. And then we had a tough time. We lost a ton of overtime games. And that was tough. But I learned a lot. I learned a lot. One of the greatest parts about that job was watching a kid like Andrew Castles really go to another level.

He had 86 points one year. And I think he had 79 the next. Jeff Sanderson had 42 and 44 goals. But having the. privilege of coaching a guy like Chris Pronger. Unbelievable. He was 19 years old. Boys, he was so good.

He was so good. He was so good. He was, I love watching old tape Pronger. He feels like one of those great examples where day one, he was NHL ready. His size, his speed, his just, his ability, is hockey IQ. It's unreal. He was nasty too, Dan. He went to shrinking violent.

He was a nasty kid in a good way. Because when you talk to him now, you're like, he's like the nicest guy in the world. It's a good story in 2000. In 2006, Edmonton's playing Carolina in the Stanley Cup final. I'm doing it for NBC. And I have to interview Proger. I'm going to say it's before one of the first games in Edmonton, and it is going that's an old Northlands call scene.

Like it's going crazy there. And I say to Pronger, thanks a lot for doing this, Chris. It's been a long time. You know, we had talks since I probably got fired, and he stayed on and got traded to St. Louis. And he goes, well, it's a good thing because I know if you're doing the interview, it's a big game. and he was kind of busting my chops a little bit.

And I just started howling on the bench, and I hear the producer, man, and I go, what the hell are you doing? Stop laughing out there. And I was like, and Pronger started laughing too. It was pretty good. That's awesome. What a guy.

Yeah, he's unreal. That's a great little transition you just said, talking about NBC. It was really fascinating to hear you say how you were addicted to coaching right away. So after a stint with the senators and then with the ECHL, you get a phone call from Ted Blackman and Montreal broadcaster from CJAD. And he asked you to do some color commentating.

And you don't even know if you can do that. You don't know if you're going to like it. But he offers you a job. You do one test. He tells you to be on national TV in two or three years. So you say yes. But like everything that you've done, was there any hesitation? Did you go all in and how addicted to this new journey were you immediately?

Because Pierre, you're one of the best. So wasn't an immediate thing. So here's what happened on that. Ted was amazing. He's no longer with us to be passed away. He was an icon. figure in Montreal sports. He was iconic. Just the fact, did he call me up, blew me away. And I asked him once. He said, why did you call

me? And he said, well, you don't remember, but Hartford and Montreal used to be in the Adams division. I'm like, yeah, no kidding. Thanks. He said, we used to save your tapes from your postgame interviews. Oh, wow. And that's how we thought you would be a color commentator. So he said, look, I don't know if you want to do it or not, but, and that's where, Dan, you're lying about you'll probably be on national TV within two or three years. He told me that because I wasn't so sure I wanted to do it. And it's pretty funny after the first year, I got offered a job and I'm not going to say the team because a bunch of my friends ended up going there and they got fired. But I got offered a big job in the West. And I spent about

10 days in that city in that area. Wow. And I was really close to taking it. And I think about it now, like I'm 63, so it'd be about almost 30 years ago. And it may be a little less. And if I had taken that job, I wouldn't have met my wife. I wouldn't have my children. You know what I mean? And who knows what my life would have turned out to be. I was addicted to coaching.

But I didn't take it because something didn't seem right when I went through the process. It just, I wasn't comfortable. And like the guys that I know that went there, they all got turfed fast. So my kind of my spitey senses were good on that one. but once I got going and then I got hired by Sports Illustrated which was awesome it was so freaking awesome I loved working there and then it just boomed it just took off like the oh two Olympics the 03 world junior you know doing NBC starting in 0506 it just exploded it just exploded is there is there any feeling of you know when you're coaching you're obviously you're watching tape you're paying attention to things around the league so you can be be good at scouting and game planning and things like that was there something kind of awesome for a hockey mind like you getting into broadcasting and really being able to enjoy and spectate almost every team in the league and every player? That is one of the best questions I've ever been asked, Dan, about broadcasting.

And I'll tell you why. I think broadcasters can become better hockey people if they watch the game with an unbiased eye. I think when you're an evaluator of talent and you're working for a team, you're always biased towards your team or you're biased towards a player you scouted or you're biased towards a player you trade it for but when you're working in broadcasting you don't care who wins or loses you you you care about hey is your friend doing well or how good is that player is he fast is he slow is he tough is he soft can he shoot the puck does he overstick handle like there's so many

different characteristics there are two things that you can watch for as a broadcaster that stand out if you're not biased and most broadcasters are not biased you can judge character and you can judge coachability because you get access to practices. And the most underrated thing of any player that gets drafted in hockey is coachability. Because most scouts don't go to practice. When you're a broadcaster, you get to go to all the practices. And you can see the guys that are coachable and the guys that aren't. So my rolodex of players since probably 98 has improved so much compared to when I was scouting

and working for a team. Yeah, that makes so much sense. That's such good insight, too. I mean, it's so true. I do think that, you know, there's almost a direct correlation with coachability and the person that you are. And that's so valuable to a team for so many different reasons. And Dan, Dan, you know we've, and I won't say them, obviously, but you know we've heard stories about guys in the league now who aren't coachable. And it pisses the group off.

You know, so that's such a huge factor. So, you know what, Chris, I'm so glad you said that because I think we probably all know there are a few guys who, are thought to be these unbelievable leaders and great people around the league. They're not as great or as good as everybody thinks. But then on the other side, there's some guys you never hear about, and they're the guys that make it happen. And they're so many.

They outnumber the bad guys. The good guys outnumber the bad guys. They really do. They really do. There's no question about it. I was like, what's that? I hope it wasn't me. Was that mean?

No, no, no. It's us. FedEx is here. Okay, but Pierre, perfect transition because you brought up NBC, and after that lockout, the 05 lockout season, Sam Floods do an NBC coverage or hockey coverage for NBC. He has this idea to put someone between the benches, wants to call it inside the glass, and he goes, I have the perfect guinea pig to do such a thing. And he comes to you, and you, I remember reading where like, I don't even know if that's going to fly with the players and the coaches and having somebody there. So I have a bunch of questions about this, but just I want to start with the beginning of the idea and how you even felt about it. So I was working at the Stanley Cup final in 2004.

It was down in Tampa. And it was before game five. Sam came to see me at the podium. I was working for TSN and Canada. So it was Gordon Miller, Bob McKenzie, and I on a podium outside the arena. And he walks right up and introduces himself. And he says, hi, Sam Flood from NBC. I said, I know you.

and I know your dad. I used to work for your father at the Europa Cup. It was one of the own. And Europa Cup was a big summer program in Boston. He says, absolutely. He goes, can I talk to you for a second? I said, sure. He goes, we just bought the NHL rights.

I said, hey, yeah, I read that. Good for you guys. Congratulations. I said, it's a great product. He said, do you think you could broadcast a game from between the benches? I said, I know I can do it. But I'm telling you right now that he's going to tell you to go buzz off. They're never going to go for.

this. So he says, if you think you can do it, I'm offering a job right now. He says, it won't be full time. You can still stay at TSM, but I'll just need you on weekends. I said, 100%. I'm in. He says, you don't want to talk prices? And no, I'll do it. I want to help grow the game. And so he says, you leave the rest to Dick Ebersoll and me, and we'll get back to you. And I'm going to say the lockout happened, you know, that summer or whatever. We had the nuclear winner. I spent two months in Europe broadcasting games. in Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and also in Austria. But halfway through that trip, they told me NBC's doing that inside the glass and you're going

to be the guy. And that's how it started. Adobe Acrobat Studio, your new foundation. Use PDF spaces to generate a presentation. Grab your docs, your permits, your moves. AI levels of your pitch gets it in a groove. Choose a template with your timeless cool. Come on now. Let's flex those two.

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Like what you can say, because you want to build that trust, right? So the people want insight because you're there. So what are we saying? But you're not going to be like, oh, I saw what happened. He hurt his shoulder. Right.

So how were you balancing that at the beginning to build the trust with the, people. I never reported injuries. I may say a guy got hurt, but I'd never say what it was. I didn't think it was appropriate to do that. You know, you can see when guys are putting ice bags on or when the training is looking at his lower body. You know what's going on. But I think there's no statute of limitations when it comes to guys trash talking one another. As long as you don't use the swear words they're using or some of the things. But I always reported that. Coach is getting mad at players. I'll never forget there.

And I won't give you the name of the player. But I was doing a game. I was doing a game. It kind of got quiet in the building. It was going into a TV timeout, and I'm like, you know, that player, player A is just not playing well. I got to think when he gets to the bench, he's going to get it from the coach. And Doc Cameron goes, thanks, Pierre, we're going to go to break now. And that player heard me. And he's eyeballing me something fierce.

Like I'm like, oh, boy, he's going to come hit me over there with a stick. And he's a friend of mine too, and he's pissed at me. And you see the coach going, stop looking at him. I'm about to do the same thing to you. He's right. Yeah, he's telling the truth. He's telling the truth. Oh, so yeah, so there was a lot.

Probably the craziest time, though, I got hit in the head during a playoff game between the Buffalo Sabres and the New York Rangers. Did you want to ask me about that man? No, no, no, no, but I'm glad you brought it up because I remember this. So I got hit in the head hard with a stick, and it cut me open pretty bad,

and I was bleeding here probably the first three minutes of the game. So Rip Simonic, who's a legendary trainer with the Buffalo Sabers, he's an unbelievable icon in the game. Like he's one of those guys you never hear about unless you're really in the game. And Ripper says to me, hey, Pete, and you always call me Pete. Hey, Pete, you're bleeding pretty bad. I said, thanks for the new flag.

Yeah, I can't see anything. I can't say. And so the producers in my ear, Dougie Walton, and he says to me, hey, Pierre, what's wrong? I said, I'm cut pretty bad. He goes, no way. I said, yeah, don't use a game camera. Shoot me from across, but you'll see I'm cut pretty bad. So he shoots over.

Holy Christ, you want to go in and get stitches? I'm going, no, no, I'm going to finish the period. So I looked at Rip, I said, just get me a towel with some ice. I'm going to put it on my head, but they're not going to put me on camera. So I just held that over my head to the end of the period. I don't know, it was like 17 minutes left. We got it done. The sabers couldn't have been more hospitable.

They bring me into their dressing room and all the players are there and they put me in the medical room. And the doctor comes out to me and he goes, we're going to do this new treatment that they use on the battlefield in Iraq. I go, what? He goes, yeah, because they have to close cuts quickly there because they don't want them to get infected with the sand flies. So he takes this needle and shoots it in my head and it closed the cut like instantaneously.

Like I've had a lot of stitches in my career, but never like bad fast. So Ripper says, you look a lot better, but that bump on your head doesn't look so good. Yeah, Pierre's got like experimental drugs up in his forehead now. I mean, if that's not a story of the epitome of a hockey guy, I don't know what it is. He's playing hurt while broadcasting. That's unbelievable. Your most amazing part about it was Alice Cotelique was one of the players. And he was a really good player in Buffalo.

He came over and apologized to me. And I said, don't you dare. I said, don't you dare. I'm intruding in your workplace. You don't have to apologize to me. I apologize to you. And I remember he was from Cheska Boutiavita, which is a small town in Czech, Republic. It's a canal town.

And I'd been there a fair bit and it's got great beer. Budvar's there. You guys have probably had it. And anyways, he's from there. And I remember seeing him over there once. And just he kept saying like, hey, I'm sorry. I'm like, you don't ever apologize to me, man. You did nothing wrong.

That's so good. That's just so hot guys are like that. Remember we're talking about good guys? He's one of the good guys. Yeah, yeah, one of the good guys. Absolutely. Pierre, what can you tell people a little bit too about how much? much because I was reading that, you know, you've got buttons there where you're talking to

the, talking to the producers about storylines you want to go, talking to the team up top. Hey, I got something to say, how much is just you are on the fly at all times. Can you talk about how complicated it actually is? It was like a math problem. We were always building tapes and we never wanted to have one story sneak by. Let's say Chris Kreider was playing for the Rangers and he was flying his playing left wing and they were flying the left side all the time. So we would have an ISO cam on Kreider and I'd say to the guy in the truck,

get it on Criter now. So we're still, I'm still broadcasting the game, but I'm doing that too. Or we're building, we're building penalty kill packs. Let's just say they're putting a press on at the half wall or they're putting a press on down by the icing line or they're playing passive resistance in the neutral zone and then reattacking at the blue line. We were creating all these different video packs while Doc Eddie and I were doing the games. Now I was doing that from down low and you know, it ended up being in such an amazing position to work from. And the tape off Matt Marvin was one of the best. A guy named Jamie Branigan in Canada off the charts.

I think I've done seven or eight Olympics with Jamie. Jamie's like a legend behind the scenes guy. Matt Marvin is just so many good people. And those guys had the talent. They call them EVS operators. It was like a video game for them. But we were trying to plug in the video for them, if you know what I mean.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Saying it's a math problem is the perfect analogy. It's truly like, You're seeing, it's the, it's the scene from the hangover where the numbers are just floating for the air the whole time. You're just trying to break the code. Was there any huge, or let me phrase it this way, what was your biggest surprise being able to sit that close?

I've heard some people say how much guys call for the puck, for example. You wouldn't expect that Washington interview. What was the biggest surprise for you once you were on ice level there? I think when the red line came out in 2005, the stretch pass, the advent of the stretch pass. Now, I played it in college and I coached it in college. I never coached it in the pro because the red line was always in. So the eye-opening thing to me wasn't the talking because I had coached and played. So I was kind of used to that.

I think the raw speed of the red line coming out. And, you know, it's interesting. The first team to win the Stanley Cup, not enough people give them credit. The first team to win the Stanley Cup with the new rules was Carolina. Their coach, Peter Laviolette, was one of the only college coaches in the NHL at that time. He grew up playing at Westfield State. He grew up without a red line. So he knew the tactics of how to play without the red line better than anybody else. And I never thought that got enough credit. I never thought it did. And I've told Peter that.

I've never thought they got enough credit. That's incredible insight. Yeah. It's such good insight. I mean, like that's, and you would think that would be something that people would have kind of clocked right away. It's like, who's used to this the second you make the change. That's such a great little fact that's amazing and i won't say the coaches because i they were all guys that i had coached against they were older guys yeah yeah you know like when you brought it up before chris i was 32 and i got my first head job like back in the day i was coaching against pat quinn i was coaching jacques lamare i was coaching at scotty bowman like if you roger nielsen you know mike keenan you start looking at the guys they're all over 70 or some of them have passed on

you're coaching against these guys you know Brian Brian Sutter is a guy that I respected so much he was as tough as anybody boys let me tell you Brian Sutter was a tough piece of business you know all these guys I'm coding it so I'm now on TV and there's some of them are still coaching like Pat was still coaching Scott he had just retired and I'm watching this going holy macro like they're coaching without they weren't used to it they weren't ready and there was one guy in particular who's a big time coach and he was really ticked off.

They changed the role because he had a hard time adjusting to it. It's such a great point. They're ingrained. Their whole careers have been with that. You know what I mean? It's such a great point. Yeah. Absolutely.

Pierre, at NBC, you worked with so many amazing people, both in front of the camera and behind the camera. And one of those people that we know means a lot to you is the great Doc Emmerich. And you have an amazing friendship with him, both from a career standpoint to your battles with cancer. And when you think about a guy like that who's meant so much to in your

life, what are some of the first things that come to mind and some of the first feelings and stories that really go through your head? How intelligent Doc is. I could have been a college professor. Doc could have been a doctor. Doc could have been an engineer. He is just witty. He's passionate.

He's so well researched. We always had a thing. We'd always have a coffee and we'd get to the rink early. I remember doing the Olympics with him in Torino. John Davidson worked with us in Nine Olympics, the O-6 Olympics. Torino and I'd always go to this little coffee shop outside our hotel and I'd bring it to Doc. You know, the towns, they like the small coffee, but they're really strong. And Doc was used to the tall coffee that was black.

Yep. And I'd walk in. I'm going to try my best to imitate Diane. You know, Pierre, that's a little bit short for that coffee. I'm used to it being a little darker and a little longer. You know, I'm like, so sorry, Doc. Oh, I had so many good times. and his passion for baseball.

Anything Pittsburgh Pirates, his patent was amazing. But I just have to tell you guys, his level of intelligence blew me away. Like, I know people talk about it, but until you witness it, like you can't imagine.

I think he had a photographic memory. He probably still does. Did it just stretch into everything, not just sports? It was kind of life. Everything. So we were at the London, we're doing the London Olympics.

We're both doing water polo. And which is like, you know what? Water polo is, honestly, it's just hockey without ice. That's what it is. It really is amazing. Every Olympics, I watch it and I'm like, wait, water polo is electric. It's a really good year. And it's, it's barbaric.

It's savage. So I was calling, it was Dick Ebersoll's ID says, we're putting McGuire by the pool, just like hockey. I'm calling the games right by the pool. Anyways, little did I know the American women are the best in the world by a mile. Like, it's not even close. and they had the best female water polo player in a world. She's like Wayne Gretzky of water polo for women. Her name is Maggie Stephens.

Maggie went to Stanford and she was 18 in 2006, her first Olympics. She was so good. It was ridiculous. And all the ladies loved hockey. Like they were all West Coast girls. So they either like the sharks, they like the kings or they like the ducks. And they would see Doc and I walk in the pool. And one of the coaches said, I don't know who you guys are,

but all the girls are talking about you. And it's not because you're good looks, you know what I mean? So they were hockey fans. So that gave Doc and I an entree into doing it. We had so much fun. But this is to Doc's intelligence. One day he says to me, hey, we got a day off. We're doing something.

I said, what do you want to do? We'll start at the Tower of London. Well, I'm going to tell you, if you're a fan of history, go do London with Doc Emmerich. Wow. Go do London with Doc Emmerich. It's everything. And there are no notes.

There are no books. There's nothing. And I was one of the best days I ever had in your, and I've been in Europe so much because of hockey, obviously. I don't know if I've ever had a better day in Europe than the day. Doc and I, he gave me this tour. And it was like, whoa, that was amazing. That's so great.

Imagine going to Rome with Doc. I would love to. Yeah. You'd be there for months. Our joke between the two of us, we always had these little. inside jokes and we went into this pub and Doc is not a big drinker and there was a beer there called London Pride. I don't know if it still exists or not. It does. I actually know of it. Okay, there you go. So Doc says to me, what are you going to have? I said, I'm going to have a Guinness,

you know, because I like Guinness. Yeah. He goes, I'll try one of those because it said London Pride. Yeah. So all the time when we saw something good happen in a hockey game, he goes, Pierre, he must not on the air. He goes, Pierre, he must have had a London Pride for night. He would crack me up. It was so good. That's amazing, man. I got to get him a London pride. Pierre, you mentioned the Olympics.

You did 2022. You were an analyst there, which I think was your seventh Olympic assignment, which is incredible. debuted in Torino, as you mentioned. And you've already told some amazing stories about the water pole and stuff. But just was that a pinch me moment for you

when you think about your broadcasting career? All of a sudden, you're at the Olympic Games. The O2 Olympics blew me away. I got so many stories about that. It was in Salt Lake City. I was working for Canadian TV. It was Mario's last Olympics, first Olympics and last.

You know, so the tie in there was pretty amazing. I got the call from a gentleman named Mark Millier who ran TSN at the time. And it was in the summer. And he said, Pierre, it's Mark Millier. And I'm like, oh, no, because usually you don't hear from the boss unless something bad's going on. I'm like, oh, damn, I'm in trouble. And he goes, we're sending you to Calgary. I'm like, for what?

He goes, for the Canadian Olympic hockey team tryouts, we want you at the camp. You're going to be going to Salt Lake City. I'm like, wow, really? And he goes, yeah, yeah, you're going to Salt Lake. And I was blown away. I was so pumped. And, you know, this is the best part of that O2 team. There was an injury that happened, and I forget who got hurt for Canada.

But all of a sudden, this pickup truck comes into Father David Bauer Arena in Calgary, and out comes Jerome Ginnla. he was and the reason he was there is because he was an easy calling from edmonton yeah right so he drove down from emminton to the camp and he was just supposed to be a filling well he played so well he made the team that's and that was like his big coming out party the o two olympics was jerome's big coming out and he was so good but the iconic playing that one was mariel lemur threw his feet to paul korea yeah and you know people and you guys are main guys so you'll appreciate me putting the korea stuff in for the black bears.

Oh, yeah. But yeah, you know, to me the biggest thing is that Olympics, when it was all sudden done, Canada beats the U.S. and Canada women beat the U.S. as well. Yeah. And it's very passionate. The women's thing was really, like, it was a little bit dicey there. It was pretty mean. And the next day, I'm at the airport early with Bob McKenzie and Gordon Miller, my partner's for

Canadian TV. and Herb Brooks is there, the late Herb Brooks. So Herbie's hot because he was coaching the Americans and they lost. And he sees us, hey, you guys, get over here. We got plenty of time. So we sat down in an establishment inside the airport in Salt Lake. And we were just having a couple beers talking. He was amazing.

I said to Bobby probably a year or two ago, I said, I wish we would have taped that. Yeah. Like it was so, Herbie was so good. He was learned so much. You know what one of his passions was? He'd get in the car in the Twin Cities. He'd drive up to Manitoba and then cut across Saskatchew, just watching junior games. He said, to me, that was hockey.

That's what he used to tell us. It was amazing. And he talked about the responsibilities we had as broadcasters to help grow the game and about how to treat people properly. It was one of the most intense days I ever had in an airport. And it was with Herbie. It was awesome. And he passed away not too long after that.

Yeah, it was tragic. Yeah. Wow, what an experience. Yeah. Bobby McIngard would tell you that was probably the most intense four-hour period we ever had together. The three of us was somebody. It was unbelievable. That is unbelievable.

That must have been your last interaction with him, no? Yes, because I think it wasn't long after he was at a golf turn and driving home. And, you know, he had a tragic car accident. So I don't think I ever saw him again after that. Wow. Wow. I mean, obviously, it's horrible what happened, but pretty good memory to end on. I mean, what a great experience.

Something I'll never forget. I told my kids about, you know, everybody watches a movie miracle. Right. And Chris Russell has such a good job mimicking or acting as if he's Sir Brooks. And I tell my kids all the time, like, best four hours or most intense four hours they ever had in Air Force with that gentleman. They're like, no way, dad. No way. Oh, that's awesome.

That's so good. excited are you for the Olympics coming or you know Olympic hockey coming back with NHL players I mean it's on everyone's mind we can't wait for it Dan I was heartbroken when they didn't go to Korea I was really I was there and I was really heartbroken I I'm I get why they didn't go and I'm not trying to start a fight with the ownership or with anybody at the NHL I get why they didn't go I it's too much to go on the air with you guys but I understand why they didn't go, but I just thought it was a lost opportunity,

especially that part of the world with the players we had. I think about, you know, with McKinnon and McDavid and Crosby and all these guys in their prime, you know, getting an opportunity to play for their countries. Now with Austin Matthews and Mitchell, Mariner and all these great players from all these different countries, I'm really glad they're going back. It's long overdue.

We've missed two cycles, you know. We miss Beijing and we missed Korea, Pyong Jane. but I'm really excited for it. And it's in a great venue in Milan. So it'll be awesome. And hey, look, let's even look at, you know, I know it's a small tournament, but even the Four Nations coming up in February.

I think it's going to be great. I'm really excited for it. Yeah, me too. And like you just said, all those players you just mentioned are guys that we've not seen in the official Olympic tournament. Obviously, they've played World Juniors and things like that. But it's so exciting the idea to see some of these guys representing their country for the first official time.

cannot wait. Yeah, so I'll just give you an example. So think back. 2004, Canada is playing in Helsinki, Finland. Sydney Crosby is 16 years old. He's the youngest player to ever score a goal for Canada at the World Junior. But in that tournament, the Americans win the first ever gold medal for Team USA at the World Junior in the same event. Then the next year, you go to Grand Rap or Grand Forks, North Dakota. Crosby's playing on a line with Patrice Berger on Cory Perry. Like, talk about a line. And they just run rough. shot over the entire world. And like Ryan Getslap's on that team.

Mike Richards is on that team. You start doing the tail of the tape. Shea Weber's on that team. I mean, it's just, it's our murderer's role of players. And it's just all these guys playing internationally. And eventually you hope it leads to the Olympics. And 2010 was a payoff for Canada. That 05, if you look at that 05 World Junior team and then go five years later,

they're playing in Vancouver. Yeah, they are. They're in Vancouver. And, you know, Babcock. at the time was on top of it. Mike was on top of it. He was a hard coach. But if you look at the staff, like Jacques Lamar is on that staff, Jacques Martinez on that

staff, Ken Hitchcock's on that staff. Like, look at the staff. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. So I thought the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver was the best winter games I ever did. I thought the 2014 Olympics in London were the best summer games I ever did. But the gold medal game between Canada and the U.S. it's never been equaled TV ratings-wise.

36 million Americans watch it, which is substantial, and 26 million Canadians watched it. And Canada, at that time, is a country of 32 million people. 26 million Canadians watch the gold medal game. That's that ridiculous. It's just hard to process like that. I mean, God, you want to ask how important is a game to a nation? Look right there.

Look no further, right? I'll look, I'm between the benches and it's one of the things I tell everybody. They're like, what's your favorite moment from that game? I'll tell you what it was. Sidney Crosby's in the slot screaming. I could hear him, there's 20,000 people in the building. They're all on top of you. And I hear Crosby, and I'm probably 120 feet away, maybe more.

And he's screaming, Iggy, Iggy, as loud as he can. And then Iggy passed the puck out from the corner and Sid walks on Ryan Miller and stashes it. And the rest of the history. Like, it was like a bomb went off. You have no idea how a lot it was at Iceland. I can't even imagine, Pierre. My God. It was crazy.

I know. I know. Pierre, before we move on to a game, we want to close out with you. I just have to know real quick, who do you like this year? Is anyone really jumping out at you that you think has a shot? Yeah, Toronto's really good. This is best Toronto team I've seen. Best Toronto team I've seen since Pat Quinn was coaching there.

And Pat was like, to me, one of the best coaches that ever coached in the league. He just, for whatever reason, they didn't have enough on the back end, but they had enough up front. They didn't have enough. So Toronto's really good. I think Colorado's not done fixing their roster. I think they're going to be really good before it's over. The dark course is Minnesota. Yes.

What Billy Garon's done there is pretty amazing. He and Ray Shiro have done an amazing job there. Oh, yeah. But Johnny Heinz is the best coach in the league. Nobody even knows coaches in the league. And, you know, I just told you the story about the 04 World Junior USA Women's our first ever goal medal in the World Union. the assistant coach to Mike Eves on that team was Johnny Heinz. This guy's pedigree for winning is insane.

Like he's won in the American League. He's won internationally. He's a really good coach. And nobody even knows he coaches. Yeah. I mean, he's just one of those guys. He just coaches. He's a coach.

So Minnesota is really good. I would never write off Florida just because Kachuk's there. And that freaking Sammy Reinhart, you think they want him back in Buffalo? My God. He's going to score 60 again. It's unbelievable how well he's playing. So I never write them off. L.A. is a lot better than I thought they would be, especially without Doughty.

And I know you guys are around there a lot, but not having Drew from the start of the year. What's blown me away there is the way Mikey Anderson's gone to another level. And Gabbercoff, that was a really good pickup getting Gavigoff out of Columbus a few years ago. And Anse, you guys probably know Anzai. I mean, he's unbelievable, man. It's crazy. You know, he's unstoppable. The Kings community has long talked about how, you know, the East Coast bias that people like to say,

not enough people talk about Cope's game. And it's been cool, you know, kind of seeing what happened to Bergeron in his last few years where it felt like nationally and frankly, across North America, people started to go, oh my God, this guy's the real deal. It's everyone's known that about Kobe for a long time inside the hockey world. But I feel like now fans of other markets are really starting to pay attention. I mean, he is first ballot Hall of Fame, no question. The guy is just timeless. It's remarkable.

I'm on the committee, and I hope he retires, so I have enough time to do his presentation. Truly. He's a lead pipe cinch. Anyways, I'll give you this one about Copa Tart. It's a good one. 05 World Championships are in Innsbruck and Vienna, and that was the lockout year. So he's an 18-year-old playing for Slovenia. It's not exactly a hockey power.

Most of his hockey was played up in Sweden. And so I get a friend of mine. He's a scout from New Jersey. He's a legend. David Conti. Now he works. He lives in Maine. We actually grew up with his son.

We know David very, very well. David's a legend, okay? And he's back then. He's on top of it. He's working for Jersey. And he looks at me. He goes, hey, McGuire, I want to talk to us. He says, who do you like here, Slovenia?

I said, well, Copatar is good. He's going to go in the first round. He goes, how good do you think he is? I said, oh, he's probably a top 10 pick. He goes, no. he should be number two. Conti said this to me. I'm not kidding you guys.

So I'm like, come on, are you sure? He goes, no, I'm telling you, he's number two. And if you do that draft, number one is Sidney Crosby. Number two should have been Copatar. Yeah. David Conti told me that. I'm telling you guys, at the World Championships

in Innsbruck, at a skate, when Canada was just loaded with all these superstar players because there was no NHL hockey that year. What a snipe. That is, I can't wait to ask him about that. Oh, yeah, I agree. It was amazing. I was like, and I always tried to give them credit for that.

Because, you know, scouts are kind of people that labor in the wilderness. Nobody knows who they are. So when they do great things, I like to acknowledge. And I'll never forget David telling me that. What a lot. That's awesome. Okay, Pierre, we play a game with everybody before they go. It's called pass shoot score.

Okay. And we give you a category and we give you three things in that category. And you got to rank them pass, shoot, score. Pass is your least favorite because assists are cool, but they're not that cool, and goes all the way up to score, which is your favorite, because, of course, light in the lamp is the best. Okay. Your first category is, I'm calling Mario Moments,

because we know you love to watch Lemieux in those early Penguin teams when you're winning cups. So the three choices are when he goes through Bork in the Eastern Conference Finals in 92, putting it through his legs, the Oh Baby goal in the 91 finals against the North Stars, or the game winning goal of game one of the 92 finals with 12, seconds left against the hawks coming back from down four one so pass on the last one you just said okay um the raymond bark would be pass shoots would be score okay and then then the old baby from bob cole the minnesota

north star goal yeah that'd be in the middle that'd be past shoot that'd be shoot okay very cool the um the hawks one you just said it in the interview today i forgot he he barely was back i forgot he been out that whole series and came back to win that one yeah then he produced a magic This is a great Mario story. So I'm on TV. He's the owner of the Penguins. And they get lit up bad in Detroit, game five, Red Wings. It's the 09 final.

So I'm walking out by myself in old Joe Lewis Arena. And this hand hits me in the back. And I don't know who it is. I figure security guard just busting my chops. It's Ace. It's Mario. It's his nickname, Ace. So I go, hey, Ace, how are you doing?

He goes, how do you think I'm doing? He said, not so good. So he looks right at me. I'm not kidding. You know, he's six foot five. I'm five, ten. Well, he's like, forfeing me pretty good. And he says, we're going to win this.

I'm like, what? Wow. He said, no, no, we're coming back to win this, Pierre. And he says, you report it. Remember, I told you, we're going to win this. And he went back to Pissburg with a team, and he wrote something on the board. And I don't know what he wrote on the board in the old dresser, but he did. And they used it as a rallying cry, and they came back and won.

They won the series. But I'm telling you, after they got throttled in game five, Mario told me walking out of Joe Lewis that that was going to happen. I was blown away. I was like, oh, my God. This guy's Nostradamus, you know. That's awesome. All right.

Pass shooting score. What else do we got? All right. Your next one is going to be Doc isms. So things that Doc would always say. Pass shoot score, waffle boarded into the corner, sachets through the neutral zone, or pitch-for-

out of the zone. That would be a pass, pitchforked out of the zone. Waffle board pass would be score. And then the one in the middle. The sashet would be the middle. I love Waffle board so much. First time I heard him say it when I'm working with him,

I had to push the talk back because I started laughing. That's so appropriate. But probably you add people at home are like, what the hell is he talking about? We get that all the time, Pierre, when new hockey fans asking us, like, what does that mean? And I'm like, it's hard to explain. Yeah.

He has so many. He's so, oh, my gosh. You know, Pierre, it's amazing. Like I have, I, we always, I loved you doing the impression earlier. We would always joke, especially some of those electric playoff games, any time a game was buzzing and someone would ring one off the bar and you'd hear that doc, fires off the crossbar. I was like, this is amazing. We had a rule.

We had a rule in the last three minutes, Eddie and I, Eddie Olcheck and I, that, we called it dock time in the last three minutes we didn't say anything unless it was a replay he just took the game over but we call it we call it dock time sam flood actually invented that he says you know what guys he's so good and he's so in the zone just don't get in his way yeah just let him go just let him go he's wound up let him go and and he did and he just took it he was so good he was incredible that's fantastic pier your next one is and i love this but you have your seven player profiles for a championship team. So I'm going to make you pass you,

score three of them. Okay. An elite puck moving defenseman, an elite goalie, or the specialist forward. So power play, PK, face off. Specialist forward will be

the first one. It wouldn't be the, it would be pass. Okay. The elite goalie, because of the salary cap and the amount of overtime gains would be a shoot.

And then the elite puck moving defenseman would be a score. You cannot, the profiles is unbreakable. Scotty Bowman and I developed that long time ago. Yeah. And if you look at every team that's won, let's see since the new rules,

every team, every single team hits the profile, every team. And the reason why elite goalie matters so much is because of the cap, the amount of overtime games, and the fact it goes to a shootout. Those are extra points in the bank.

If you don't have that goalie, you're not getting them. And so it can make it an easier playoff run for you or a harder playoff run for you. So, yeah, now the seven-player profile, Scotty and I kind of came up with that in Sarasota, Florida. I'm going to say, I don't know, like 0, 3, 02, something like that, yeah. And for the people listening, it's two dominant centermen, a power forward, a specialist forward, elite puck moving defensemen, elite shutdown defenseman, elite goaltender. Would you say the elite puck movie defenseman is your favorite of them, of them all, of all seven? No, I'd say the top.

If you have an elite centerman, so you have a Lemieux, have a Joe Thornton. You have a Joe Sackick. See, and sometimes you can get redundant at those. So for Colorado, you think about when they were winning their cups, you come one, two, Sackick-Forsberger. So that just changes the rules of the game. Like we had Lemieux-Francis, and then we go to Trache. Like, it changed the rules of the game when you have that. well said.

So that's why those guys matter. Those guys matter a ton. Look at Crosby Malkin. Like it makes perfect sense. You know, double trouble. We used to call it double trouble all the time, those two guys, you know. I love you scoring with elite puck moving defensemen. And I have a quick question for you.

I feel like everyone talks about Kail McCar as the best puck moving defenseman in the league right now. But obviously, Quinn Hughes wins the Norris last year. And then recently, NHL released a stat, breakdown the two of their careers. They're pretty neck. connect, games played, points, time on ice, things like that. So do you think Quinn isn't getting enough credit for how unbelievable he is? Yes. I'm so glad, Dan, that you brought that up. Quinn Hughes is so good. And, you know, we talked about the West Coast, East Coast, biased kind of deal. He's part of that. He's not getting nearly enough. So what I did about,

every morning I get up, I get up really early. I watch tons of tape and I do breakdowns, different things every day. So one day this week I came up with the left side for the Toronto Maple Leafs is larger than anybody else's team in the NHL. Matthew Nyes, Max Patcheretti, Bobby McMahon, and Stephen Lorenz. The shortest guy is 6-2 and the latest guy is 205 pounds. Like there's no team in the NHL that's got bigger left-wingers than those guys. So if you're playing them in a playoff series and your rate defense is vulnerable, they're not going to make it through. Because those four guys are going to kill your three. three guys. That's what's going to happen. So, like, there's certain things. So I did a statistical

breakdown on Quinn Hudson, or sorry, it's not Quinn, Lane Hudson and Quinn Hughes. Okay, Lane Hudson and Quinn Hughes. So go look at Quinn Hughes's first two years in the league. Doesn't count like the five games he came out of Michigan. Look at his first two years. He's a minus gazillion. Yeah. He's getting points. But from then on, he's never been a minus player. and all these people knock his defense, he's never, go look at it, he's never been a minus player. So I think Quinn Hudson is a superstar. Yeah. And I've been saying it for three years.

You know, a lot of people, he'll never play, he's too small. He's this. He's every bit Quinn Hughes. Yep. He's every bit. Yeah. And this year, I'm telling you guys, he's going to be a minus gazillion. But it's fine.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And this is for all the coaches that watch your show. And I know a lot of different coaches do. when I got Pronger in Hartford, I called Scottie Bowman up. And I said, how did you coach Larry Robinson? And he told me.

And he said, Pierre, I'm glad you asked me about Larry Robinson and not Phil Housley. I said, why is that? He goes, because coach and Larry was different than coach and Phil. I let Phil go. And I didn't care how many mistakes he made because I knew he could overcome it down the road because he was just so great offensively. I needed Larry to stabilize the game in our own zone. so he couldn't be that high-risk player.

Well, it was the same thing for me with Pronger. And I think Chris probably felt I was really hard on him early in his career, but I think he realized after time it was probably for the best. Yeah, absolutely. All right. And now, Chris, give Pierre the last one. Okay, yeah, last one, Pierre. We're going to do your viral moments, okay?

So pass-shoot score, the double D-on, the how's your breath to fill, or the Bufflin, Dustin Bufflin. They're all good. Well, first of all, I apologize to Phil right away. That was just a misinterpretation. It was so funny. And I can't believe he took it that way, though.

He was such a good sport. He took it so well. The best part about that was it was a playoffs here between Pittsburgh and Tampa. You guys will love this. I walked in the dressing in the next day because I wanted to fill the know I felt so bad about that. Yeah.

They had put all this gum in his locker. You know how hockey guys can be? Oh, man, I had never heard that story. Yeah, they put all this gum in his locker and they were busting his chops. And I went up and I said, Phil, he said, don't worry about it. It was funny. Everybody's laughing. So I'm going to say that that's a score.

Yeah, that is awesome. Because of the way Phil handle it. Phil was so good. The Bufflin one, I would say would be pass. Yeah. And then the one that gets the most there was the double Dion. Double Diod. And everybody asked me about that.

like wherever I go on Canada in particular. Did you make that? I just, it just came up. Yeah. It just happened. But the most amazing part about the double Dion was it leads to a goal. Yeah.

Oh yeah. The Bergeron goal. It's Bergeron, Crosby and Perry, Corey Perry. So it's like all these guys that ended up having these unbelievable NHL careers playing World Junior in Grand Forks, North Dakota at 50 below zero.

You know, it all starts with like Dionne Funf being a bowling ball and using the Russian players as bowling pins. You know, it's unbelievable. But the skill, like, if you go watch that play, the skill level was insane. It's ridiculous, Pierre. And that was the final, I think, right? Like that one, yeah, they're like going up four one against Russia in the final.

It was insane. What happened in that one was Brent Sutter was a coach. And he's not a shrinking violet. Like, he's a tough dude. He's a really tough guy. So his team knew they had one game plan. Ovechkin's not going to be comfortable in this game. Yeah.

And so every time he was even near the puck, they slashed him or they hit. He never finished the game. He got knocked out after, I think, the first five minutes of the second period. I don't even think he may not have played the second period, but he was done. Like after the first period, he was done. So if you go look at, it's an amazing piece of tape, and I know you guys love this, go watch the Canada-Russia game in Vancouver. And Canada starts a line of Jonathan Taves.

Rick Nash and Mike Richards. Wow. And go watch what they do to Ovechkin and go watch what they do to Sergey Gonchar. Wow. It's the Brent Sutter game plan. He's probably watching it from Viking Alberta. And he's saying, hey, hey, they're plagiarized in my game plan.

I did that in 2005. It was savage. And I even brought it up on the broadcast. I'm like, this reminds me of 05 at the World Junior. And most of these guys were there. Like the Canadian kids, they had been there. So they knew what it was about. Knew what it would take.

God, that's awesome. So good. All right, Pierre, we've taken up enough of your time. Oh, I feel like we could talk to you for five hours. This is so unreal. We can't thank you enough for coming on before we let you go. Is there anything you want to plug? Anything you want to shout out?

No, I just want to thank you guys for your friendship and for having me on. I love talking hockey. You guys are gentlemen. You've treated me great. So thank you. Merry Christmas. Right back at you. Merry Christmas to you.

You're Babson guys too, so we're kind of like a little bit attached. Absolutely. You need to tell the people out there, they're the Babson beavers, just so everybody knows. Yes. Unbelievable program. Unbelievable gear. I love their colors, everything. No notes on bad.

Their hockey coach, Jamie Rice, is a kid that I recruited, and it came down to us, Dartmouth and West Point, and we ended up getting them at Babson, so I was really proud of that. There you go. That's huge. That's how we ended up back there. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, Pierre, we'll have to get together soon. We'll have some London prides and we'll kick it the right way.

I hope so because I would like to get together with you guys in Boston. Definitely. As soon as you're back, as soon as your back, hit us up. Thanks a lot, man. This has been so much fun. You guys are great. Back at you, very Christmas, boys. Massive thank you to our good friend, Pierre, for jumping on,

for sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of the game, for sharing his stories. Dan, how sick is it every time? he's like, hold, like, we'll be ready to move on. He's like, just quick story real, real quick. I get a story. And I'm like, oh, yes. It was so funny. C.P. early in the episode, he was like, sorry.

And I was like, don't you dare say sorry. I went here every single one of these stories. He also cracked me up. He said he thinks Doc has a photographic memory. I was like, my man, you have a photographic. Like you, this guy remembers every single one of his friends' names, where they live, where they went to school. It's, I mean, he's just truly one of the greatest in the biz. It's unreal.

cannot thank Pierre enough. We're going to have him on again whenever he wants. And just what a beautiful, beautiful episode to have. Had so much fun. We hope you guys did too. Until we see you next time, remember what to do. Skate hard.