Pierre McGuire hired by Canadian NHL team, will not be back on T.V.

One of the most recognizable figures in the National Hockey League is set to begin the next chapter of his hockey career, and this one will be significantly different than the previous one.

On Monday the Ottawa Senators announced that NHL analyst Pierre McGuire had been hired by their organization to come in as senior vice president of player development, a role he will now take on effective immediately. Anyone that has spent any amount of time listening to McGuire during an NBC broadcast of an NHL game will realize that he is quite the solid pick for a player development role, given what is his frankly ludicrous knowledge of even the most obscure details about players in and around the game of hockey. 

I suspect that the move will be a relatively popular one given that McGuire has not always been everyone's cup of tea, and in fact has drawn a lot of negative criticism from those who found his mannerisms to be somewhat creepy or who felt McGuire himself could come off as socially awkward at times. His knowledge of the game is beyond reproach but he has not always been a fan favorite, although there is no doubt a contingent of hockey fans that absolutely love the man, and with this move the Ottawa Senators are effectively ensuring that he will not be returning to an NHL broadcast anytime soon.

McGuire was a fixture of the NHL broadcast during his work with NBC Sports, however this season was the final season under the current NHL rights agreement. NBC has since lost the rights to broadcast the NHL in a bid to ESPN and TNT, which means that those two networks will now hire their own production teams and their own talent to broadcast the league's games. It is unclear if McGuire had been offered a role by either of those networks, but even if he had I suspect he might have taken this job anyways had it been on the table.

It is no secret that McGuire has wanted to return to a front office role in the NHL for some time now, and frankly I am happy to see him get another shot to live out his dream.