When the news broke a week ago that NBC Sports was planning to replace Pierre McGuire on their top broadcast team with former Flyer Brian Boucher, much of the hockey world rejoiced. It seemed legitimate enough with a report from The Athletic‘s Rick Carpiniello spreading like wildfire. I turned on the radio today and heard Jason Myrtetus bring it up with the Cuz, which led me to seek an update. Boy oh boy did I find one. Oddly enough, it didn’t spread nearly as far or wide as the initial report.

McGuire went onto TSN 690 Radio in Montreal and -much to the surprise of everyone- claimed that he hadn’t, in fact, been demoted. (Pertinent audio at 2:40):

Somebody, I don’t know who in New York, wrote something that was very inaccurate… In fact, we all at NBC got our work schedules yesterday, and today I got an elongated work schedule from NBC and also spoke with “major-domo” Sam Flood, who’s really been responsible for creating the NHL on NBC. He was just like, “I don’t know how all this started. I don’t know where it came from. I’m apologizing. This is what the schedule is. We went through this last year, you went to the West to help with the ratings.” And we had gigantic numbers both in the East and the West last year and I enjoyed doing it. I really liked it, because when you were doing my job for almost 16 years of staying in the East all the time -or virtually all the time- you saw the other teams on TV, but you didn’t spend time with those players very often unless they were on the east coast swing. You never really got past Minnesota, so now I get a chance to see every player in the league and talk to them and it’s been great and I really appreciated it.

So there you have it. Looks like McGuire will still pal around with Doc Emrick and Eddie Olcyzk on the #1 team. Honestly, it doesn’t matter, because the hockey is almost here.

Side note, keep an eye out for an exclusive interview with myself and Anthony SanFilippo. We’ll be joined by Flyers head coach Alain Vigneault.

For more Flyers coverage, check out Snow The Goalie with Anthony SanFilippo and Russ Joy.

https://art19.com/shows/snow-the-goalie-a-flyers-podcast