Ron MacLean Defends Alex Burrows Coverage on HNIC
January 19, 2010 2 Comments
This is something I sort of stayed away from this week, mostly because I missed most of the piece and it’s been done to death already. But the Vancouver Sun has Ron MacLean talking about his coverage of the Alex Burrows/Stephane Auger controversy:
“No regrets, absolutely not,” MacLean said. “The only thing I would say to Vancouver Canuck fans who are outraged is understand that that was about conflict management, that was not about Alex Burrows.
“Never once was it meant to be about Burrows … It was a tutorial and I have no regrets. That’s our job. Insult is the price of clarity.”
Much of the 11-minute segment was spent detailing past transgressions of Burrows over the last couple of years and on-air MacLean dismissed out of hand Burrows’ claim that Auger warned him before the Jan. 11 game against Nashville that he was going to pay him back for embarrassing him in a game in Nashville a month earlier.
MacLean said today he personally does not believe Auger warned Burrows about payback.
“I absolutely 100 per cent can’t buy Auger would say I’m going to get you,” he said. “I do dismiss that out of hand … The referee is committing suicide. Does he hate his career that much that he wants to go out and do that.”
There’s a lot more, including videos, if you check out the link. We’ve done a couple HNIC things this week already, let me know your thoughts on this situation.
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It is my dignified and carefully considered opinion that MacLean is talking out of his ass. That was one of the nastier hit pieces I’ve seen in awhile, and the whitewashing of Auger’s (well known) previous incidents was ridiculous.
It’s fine for someone who covers something (politics, a war, or the NHL) to have an opinion on it – after all, they’re journalists, not robots. But MacLean in recent years has not been shy about siding with the zebras whenever they’ve been in the hockey headlines. It’s going to take some time for him to rebuild his credibility on any refereeing-related issues, and in fact, at this point, he needs to decide what he is first: a journalist or a referee.
If it’s the former, we’ll see whether he’s up to the task of impartiality whenever the next controversy comes along. If it’s the latter, let him get out of the way so someone less tied to the brotherhood can take his place on it.