
On Wednesday, January 30th, Olympic gold medalist Kendall Coyne Schofield was broadcasting on NBC with Pierre McGuire. This is notable to a degree, but isn’t the usual kind of ‘first’ that would trend in the news cycle since Cassie Campbell-Pascall has been calling games since 2006. So why am I talking about it? Pierre McGuire did what he does best by acting like he’d missed the last thirty years (something echoed in his hockey opinions, incidentally). His antics briefly trended on Twitter and lead to articles from the CBC, Globe and Mail, The Athletic, and on and on (as one would expect), but with no real consequences (an expected apology and that’s it).
Everyone who reads this blog is aware of both the event and the coverage, so why bring it up here? It isn’t that the event itself is surprising (sadly), or that the coverage from the media was unusual, or that Schofield let McGuire off the hook (I have no doubt she wishes to continue calling games for NBC). What did surprise me is the utter radio silence from the Ottawa blogging community (something I brought up at the time). All I can find is silence. You can work your way through the entire Sens blogging community and there’s nothing there–from The Silver Seven, The 6th Sens (which I think Nichols is letting die–nothing posted since November?), Senchirp, Senshot, WTYKY (a name change any time soon guys?), etc. I find this enormously puzzling, particularly with McGuire remaining a regular on Ottawa radio. I don’t have to go back that far (2015) to find WTYKY’s Andrew reading the riot act about behaviour from those involved with the league and his sentiments are hardly unique to him.
I have no conclusion to this. I’ve talked to a few people and the summary is simply: they didn’t notice it wasn’t covered. Are we simply at a point where this is expected of McGuire? Is it simple indifference? I really don’t know, but I bring it to you to share my puzzlement.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
3 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
I’ll be honest, I’ve pulled back significantly in following sens blogs, mostly because the majority of my favorite writers either remain on S7S or jumped to the Athletic.
Having said that, it reminds a lot of how Brennan and Garrioch eventually fell by the way side in terms of criticism. A lot of these hockey guys are simply out of touch and even the social media coverage accepted that.
That very well could be. Some would think their platform isn’t the place for the discussion either, but I was honestly looking forward to *seeing* the reaction and was surprised there was none.
[…] Drake Batherson and Alex Formenton) for awhile and thought I’d weigh in. I mentioned a long time ago that fans aren’t consistent in what does or does not inspire outrage, but that aside, the […]