BEHIND SCENES BETWEEN BENCHES
NBC’s McGuire offers inside look at ‘Inside Glass’
The Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks is starting in 30 minutes, and analyst Pierre McGuire is headed to work.
First he stops to talk to Penguins defenseman Olli Maatta, who is riding a stationary bike. Then McGuire makes small talk with a referee and a linesman. Finally he walks across the ice, climbs over the boards and settles into his office — the space between the teams’ benches.
Just as Wayne Gretzky had his office behind the net, Phil Esposito had the slot and Ron Hextall the crease, McGuire has the space he has used to help change the game.
“It’s like he invented his job,” NBC playby-play broadcaster Kenny Albert says.
USA TODAY Sports spent a portion of Wednesday’s NBC Sports Network “Rivalry Night” game at United Center inside the glass with McGuire and witnessed the celebrity the former coach has become — with fans waiting to take selfies— from one of themost unusual positions in sports.
“I think if there is no one down there players don’t feel like it’s a big game,” McGuire says. “It has nothing to do with me, because teams now have their own guys doing it.”
Indeed, the between-the-benches coverage McGuire started a decade ago has become commonplace around the league.
“I still miss coaching,” McGuire says. “And being inside the glass is as close as you can get to coaching without coaching.”
Before the puck drops, Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford stops by to chat with McGuire. There’s no microphone. Then McGuire, who grew up in the Montreal area, talks in French to Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. Pittsburgh forward Eric Fehr and Chicago forward Andrew Shaw also visit and exchange a laugh.
“In the playoffs, it’s different,” McGuire says. “Unless they talk to you, you don’t talk to them.”
McGuire’s “Inside the Glass” feature was the brainchild of NBC executive producer Sam Flood, who liked the insider perspective coming from analysts working on pit row in NASCAR. He thought of McGuire, with whom he had coached in a summer league, and put it in place in January 2006 after the 2004-05 canceled season.
“Sam came up to me at the 2004 Stanley Cup Final and said, ‘Do you think you could call a game from between the benches?’ ” McGuire tells USA TODAY Sports. “I
said, ‘I know I can, but there is no way the NHL will ever allow it. Sam said, ‘You leave that to me and (former NBC president) Dick Ebersol.’ ”
Flood says he knew “Inside the Glass” was going to have staying power the first time NBC did it with McGuire.
“We were hearing stuff we never heard before,” Flood says. “We could ask questions, and we had real-time intel.”
In Game 5 of the 2008 Stanley Cup Final, Penguins forward Petr Sykora predicted to McGuire he would score in overtime against the Detroit Red Wings.
“He has been benched for good portions of the game,” McGuire says. “He said, ‘Pierre, I’m going to score the game-winning goal.’ I reported that on the air, and sure enough he did.”
What fans see is McGuire penned between the benches in cramped quarters and reporting on what he sees and hears. What they don’t see is that his skill as a schmoozer serves him as much as his background as a former NHL coach.
“There was an adjustment early, and now you have a generation of players who have grown up with this,” Penguins vice president Tom McMillan says. “It’s just part of the furniture.”
When McGuire first started embedding between competing teams, the NHL expressed nervousness that he would be privy to sensitive information. But that has given way to an overwhelming sense that having an analyst close to the game serves the fans.
“He is giving you the temperature of what is going on on the ice,” NBC pro- ducer Josh Freedenberg says. “He’s an analyst who is in the action.”
The NHL stipulated years ago that McGuire, or any other analyst reporting between the benches, can’t provide specific injury details, violate the confidentiality of a player-coach conversation or reveal specific team strategy.
Flood says he has never received pushback from the NHL.
“There is a code of hockey, and Pierre knows the code,” Flood says. “He knows what is fair and what isn’t fair.”
Flood says McGuire’s ability to strike a balance between interesting reporting and fairness helped the feature succeed: “If we had someone saying the wrong things and giving out information that shouldn’t have been given out, the whole operation could have been shut down.”
Ed Olczyk, analyst for NBC and CSN-Chicago, has done the “Inside the Glass” assignment a few times and doesn’t enjoy it asmuch as working in the booth.
“You get a way different perspective down there,” Olczyk says.
McGuire has to dodge errant sticks, pucks and occasional skate blade. He was clipped by a stick and had blood flowing down his face. His scariest moment was at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena.
“A player got checked into me, and there was nowhere for me to go,” he says. “I was up against the glass, and his skate missed me by (an inch).”
McGuire has an idea to take the feature to the next level. He’d like to question players on the ice as they warm up.
“Imagine if I can skate with Duncan Keith and say, ‘You are probably going to play a lot against (Sidney) Crosby tonight, what are you looking to do?’ ” he says. “I think this could be our next step.”