All points bulletin
NBC’s coverage of the absolutely fantastic Flyers-Penguins game this afternoon blew CBC’s out of the water, and anyone who knows how I feel about Pierre McGuire—that would be anyone even remotely familiar with me or my work—knows what it means for me to say that. First of all, NBC’s Mike Emrick is a first-rate play-by-play guy. CBC’s Dean Brown… isn’t. On the colour side, CBC’s Gary Galley also… isn’t. So the Mother Corp. is working from a disadvantage to start with, even before they put P.J. Stock on the panel with Kelly Hrudey and Ron MacLean, both of whom are terrific. What can one even say about Stock? Even if he had something interesting to say, which he does not, the poor guy can hardly speak English. His continued presence on HNIC is utterly baffling. In contrast, back on NBC, Mike Milbury has most definitely found his calling in front of a television camera as a hockey panel guy. I’m paraphrasing slightly here, but his statement that “Philadelphians love cheesesteak and violence, and so do I,” is one of my favourite off-ice hockey moments in recent memory. (Assuming CBC doesn’t plan to switch gears entirely, the ideal replacement for Don Cherry on Coach’s Corner couldn’t really be more obvious.)
McGuire, however, is everywhere in the NBC coverage: he’s Emrick’s colour guy, and he’s Milbury’s intermission partner. So how can I stand it? Because McGuire doesn’t act like an overcaffeinated idiot on NBC. This means someone at TSN is telling him to behave like an overcaffeinated idiot, or isn’t telling him not to. I hereby call for this person to be located and either convinced to change his ways or exiled to some kind of penal colony.
Tags: Hockey Night in Canada, Mike Milbury, NBC, Pierre Mcguire