The Pittsburgh Penguins are still looking for the man to lead their hockey operations, and there’s still a chance that man could be Pierre McGuire.
The polarizing NBC Sports hockey analyst has reportedly interviewed for the vacant Penguins general manager job, and McGuire confirmed those rumors Tuesday morning. McGuire, speaking on TSN 1050 in Toronto, admitted that’s he’s spoken twice with the club.
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McGuire pulled back the curtain on how the Penguins — and every other NHL team — goes about its business in these types of situations.
“There’s a process that goes into all of these searches in these job situations across the NHL,” he said on TSN 1050. “You know, there are 30 manager’s jobs in the league, and a lot of people think that when there’s an open you just put your resume together, throw it in and someone calls you  back. That’s not how it works.
“The way the process works usually is a certain number of candidates are identified, they’re contacted by the team and the process starts there. There’s a feeling out on the phone usually and then they decide whether they want to bring you into to talk to you or they want to go meet you. That’s how the process works.”
Unsurprisingly, McGuire sounded very interested in the job, and the hockey lifer understands the magnitude of a position like the one in Pittsburgh.
“This has been an amazing situation in Pittsburgh,” he said. “First of all, because the general manager that got fired probably didn’t deserve to be fired. Ray Shero has done an amazing job with that group and put together a real strong team. I think management and ownership have had higher expectations for the team over the last five years that haven’t been realized and that’s when change obviously happens. It’s been a pretty fluid process over the last 10 days or two weeks.”
That was all McGuire offered with regard to the Penguins job, but it certainly sounds — just judging by the reported and confirmed amount of dialogue between the two sides — as if McGuire is very much in the mix.
If the Penguins did hire McGuire in any capacity, it would be a return for the 52-year-old. McGuire worked as a scout with the Penguins and won two Stanley Cups as an assistant coach in Pittsburgh in the early 1990s. Those teams were led by Mario Lemieux, one of the current owners of the Penguins.
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@SlamSports
