Michael Nylander of the Rangers just got the game winning goal against the Bruins in Boston a few minutes ago, which means he got the NBC post game interview with Pierre McGuire. And boy, was this post game interview more entertaining than any I've heard in a looong while...
Pierre McGuire (PM): When you're a center ice man playing with Jaromir Jagr, what's the most important thing for you to concentrate on?
Michael Nylander (MN): Jags, Jags, Jags, Jags, Jags [Laughs from John Davidson in the booth]. Jags is a demanding player. He wants the puck. He wants to create. He wants to score. He wants, you know, to produce for the team and he is an excellent player. He has high demands on himself and his teammates, and you know, he pushes everybody to be good.
PM: You have Henrik Lundqvist here who's a fellow Swede, are you learning any Czech with all the Czechs that are around you?
MN: Stay away from that language [McGuire laughs]. Keep the Swedish and English. And some French, French too, sometimes. Because of you, remember, you teach me in Hartford*, all the French. When you gave me sh** all the time.
PM: [Losing it in laughter] Thank you very much Michael. Back to you Doc.
Mike Emrick: I believe that means Greek grief. So...
A classic moment, to be sure. One question left unanswered that I would have asked because Nylander played with Jagr in Washington: What's the difference in Jagr between New York and Washington that's made him such a better player this season?
UPDATE: Both Emrick and Bill Clement fell all over themselves apologizing for Nylander's swearing, but I'm wondering if NHL on HBO isn't a bad idea.
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*McGuire was Nylader's head coach when he broke into the NHL with the Whalers.
Eric,
I was laughing too. Very funny, although NBC seemed a little overwrought afterwards, as if he’d cursed, rather than just used a salty idiom. (Ignoring the fact that “sh**” is pretty mild in Germanic languages, so native speakers of those tongues tend to drop the “s-bomb” in contexts inappropriate to English speakers…)
Oh, but my point in writing was: I think Emrick said “grief” as in “When you gave me [grief] all the time…”
Bill Walsh
NBC wants two potentially incompatible things. They want “unplugged”, live access to players during and immediately after games. And they want not to be fined by the FCC for airing one of George Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on TV. It’s one thing for the professional announcers to know what words they can and can’t use on the air. It’s altogether another for the players, especially players who aren’t native speakers of English. For what it’s worth, you hear similar words, spoken with more passion, when there are mikes set near the ice. There was at least one such during the Rangers game. I didn’t hear what was said, but did hear the apology for that.