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sandysensfan wrote:Flo The Action wrote:anyone heard this morning macguire the validity of the rumors about spezza? I think it's pretty much a question of time that this guy is gone. why some people have a problem wrapping their heads around that is beyond me.
Pierre McGuire has said numerous times that it will be a mistake for the Sens to trade Spezza...
http://articles.courant.com/1994-05-21/sports/9405210429_1_pierre-mcguire-whalers-general-manager-paul-holmgren
In a blistering post-mortem, captain Pat Verbeek called McGuire's firing the best thing that could have happened to the Whalers. He said other teams mocked their coach. He said his own teammates had no respect for McGuire. He said a number of players wouldn't have wanted to play in Hartford anymore.
Is Verbeek telling the truth?
It sure looks that way.
Every player and every non-skating member of the Whalers does not have the financial luxury or the courage to speak on the record as Verbeek and Sean Burke have. But in the past six weeks, we spoke to no fewer than 20 people --from all areas of the organization. The support for McGuire was almost nonexistent. It turns out that it wasn't only the players. It was almost everybody. And once owner Richard Gordon was convinced of the facts, McGuire was out.
We said he was headstrong.
McGuire has insisted that if he had pulled a few different strings during the Buffalo nightclub mess -- such as making it clear about a disputed curfew -- there would have been no problems. But Verbeek and Holmgren say the Buffalo affair merely was the cap on a bubbling bottle of discontent.
In a May 3 meeting with Holmgren, it was made clear to McGuire that he must talk to a number of players to clear up obvious problems. But in two weeks, McGuire spoke only to Sean Burke.
We said McGuire was overemotional.
When the hallway curtain opened after a loss in Boston, McGuire was found by the media wildly smashing sticks against the wall. When the door opened after a loss in Pittsburgh, McGuire was seen knocking furniture around the coach's room.
We said he was full of himself.
Many times he privately said after a game how he outcoached the other guy. But it was something never really made public until May 3, when McGuire proclaimed that no coach in the NHL "can outwit me.'' That quote ran in The Hockey News and raised eyebrows all over the NHL.
His fascination with trying to outwit the other coach may hurt the Whalers in the long run. Instead of playing kids such as Robert Petrovicky or Kevin Smyth long after it was apparent the team was out of the playoff race, McGuire would fastidiously match lines, go with aging veterans and make sure certain faceoff alignments were always followed. Instead of development, he seemed just to want to squeeze out two points.
Once when he was an assistant coach, McGuire bragged about his strategy to shut down Mario Lemieux. This was after a 7-3 loss and four goals by Kevin Stevens.
On the bench, players said McGuire would taunt the other team, saying he couldn't believe the opposing coach was allowing him certain line matchups. This braggadocio led Pittsburgh's Jaromir Jagr to mock McGuire in December. McGuire got Jagr for an illegal stick, and after Jagr jumped out of the penalty box, he scored on a breakaway. Although he had scored big goals in two Stanley Cup championships, Jagr called this overtime goal the biggest of his life because he humbled "that know-it-all."
It goes on for another page.
