Senators Fire Pierre McGuire

In an unexpected piece of news, the Senators have reportedly fired Pierre McGuire.

AJ Jakubec @TheSuperAJ

Hearing Pierre McGuire has been fired by the Ottawa Senators. @TSNSteveLloyd has confirmed. #Sens

Hired last July as the team’s senior vice president of player development, McGuire did not even last a year in his role.

Perhaps this should have been anticipated with the recent passing of owner Eugene Melnyk. McGuire was hired directly by the owner and general manager Pierre Dorion acknowledged at the time that he had little input in the addition of McGuire. To fire McGuire, the general manager received the blessing of the team’s three-person board of directors to pull the trigger.

Rumours have floated around that the league encouraged the owner to bring McGuire into the fold. After the longtime broadcaster was out of a job following the NHL’s move from NBC Sports to ESPN. Whether that was true or not, the Senators had one of the smallest front offices in the league. Given all of the mismanagement and the endless stream of embarrassingly bad messaging whenever the owner or general manager was in the vicinity of a microphone, it was not hard to recognize that the presence of someone with McGuire’s background and broadcasting experience could assist the front office.

If it was the league’s directive to hire McGuire or whether it was another one of Melnyk’s hatched plans, McGuire was an outsider in a front office that Dorion shaped.

It never helped that it felt like McGuire never really had a clearly defined role. At the time of his hiring, McGuire acknowledged in a sweeping media tour that one component of his job portfolio was to take on a share of the spokesperson duties. That never happened. McGuire’s last media availability occurred before the start of the season.

According to public information, one of his last duties was to fly to Grand Forks, North Dakota with Dorion and have dinner with prospects Jake Sanderson and Tyler Kleven. There, the two were tasked with convincing both prospects to turn pro.

Thanks to his media profile, McGuire brought some cachet to a front office that otherwise had none. Poor and mixed messages have undermined a lot of the goodwill that remained in this fan base, but McGuire’s strengths were never really utilized. That they weren’t made a lot of people in this community wonder what his roles and responsibilities were.

As a highly recognizable personality who also happened to be one of the organization’s first major external hires since 2003, I could understand the discomfort that his presence probably created — especially since Melnyk hired him unilaterally. Since inheriting the general manager title in 2016, Dorion may have felt like McGuire was a threat to his job.

This idea that McGuire was a viable internal candidate to replace Dorion if things continued to sputter made sense on many levels. There was always this omnipresent suspicion that an ambitious McGuire only took this job because it would have carried the possibility of upwards mobility.

Unlike Dorion, who has been with the Senators since 2007, McGuire was not connected in any way to the team’s transactions and history. McGuire arrived in Ottawa with a clean slate. He represented a departure from the status quo. He was someone who the most optimistic of fans believed could positively impact this front office through his wealth of knowledge and hockey connections.

Now he leaves with many wondering what he actually had his fingerprints on.

One of the transactions that people are ready to leave at McGuire’s doorstep is the Michael Del Zotto signing.

In Bruce Garrioch’s latest, he wrote that “the belief in hockey circles is that McGuire played a big role in that decision.”

The Postmedia scribe also expressed a belief that McGuire’s position would not be filled. His responsibilities would be absorbed by the rest of the hockey operations staff.

With one of the smallest front office staffs in the league, the team needs all the help it can get. Instead of hiring McGuire, imagine the organization reallocating that money towards funding and sustaining an in-house analytics department.

In fairness to Dorion and the organization, maybe McGuire was a terrible hire who had an antiquated set of hockey beliefs. McGuire’s disdain for analytics was well recognized before he was hired and without an owner and proponent who was in his corner, he was on the outs.

Now, we’re back to the status quo.

For a front office that has struggled to earn and build consumer confidence with its shrewd management and diligent moves, it is easy to wonder what is next.

Dorion’s first move of the summer was to fire someone he may have once perceived as a threat to his job. If self-preservation is going to be the theme for the offseason, will that also be reflected in his personnel decisions?

For as much as the league and the defenders of the status quo want to portray the Senators as being an organization that isn’t for sale or needs to change, it seems foolish to believe that the Senators can continue to operate and exist as they are currently structured.