In 15 years of covering the NHL, we had never seen a coach so universally disrespected and disliked within his own organization.
McGuire fancied himself two parts Scotty Bowman and one part Bob Johnson. It turned out to be a superhuman leap of faith on his part.
At 32, McGuire was the youngest head coach in the NHL. He never had been a head coach at any level. And it showed. He is book smart and X's and O's smart, but often not people smart.
When a young man is so headstrong, so emotional, so calculating, such a control freak, so full of ambition and so full of himself, he will either rocket to the top or crash.
Maybe McGuire will rebound. Maybe Quebec will hire him as head coach or Bowman will make him an assistant in Detroit. It is difficult to believe McGuire, who has one year and about $200,000 left on his contract, can remain with the Whalers in any official capacity.
It also is quite evident McGuire's joint Bowman-Johnson modus operandi was in itself problematic. Bowman's instincts are to be cold, calculating, sometimes dictatorial. Johnson was optimistic, shepherding, encouraging. McGuire tried to be simultaneously distant and close to his players. It didn't work.
In a blistering post-mortem, captain Pat Verbeek called McGuire's firing the best thing that could have happened to the Whalers. He said other teams mocked their coach. He said his own teammates had no respect for McGuire. He said a number of players wouldn't have wanted to play in Hartford anymore.
