Matt Barnaby — of All People — to Replace Melrose at ESPN?

There hasn’t been much serious talk regarding who will fill the shoes (and hair) of Barry Melrose at ESPN. Of course the blogosphere has been a buzz trying to guess and set odds for the whole thing, but there has yet to be much about who ESPN would be interviewing/hiring.

Consider the hat of Matthew Barnaby, former Sabre, Penguin, Lightning, Ranger, Avalanche, Star and Blackhawk (gotta love free agency), now in the ring.

At Going Five Hole, Sean reports that earlier this week on LCS hockey Barnaby confirmed that he is in talks with ESPN to fill the vacancy left by Melrose.

Barnaby, who makes the occasional appearance on TSN, noted he was going to meet with ESPN executives about the open position as lead NHL analyst with the WorldWide Leader. I did a poll over at Puck Daddy about who should replace Barry Melrose as the puck-talking head over at ESPN. While Barnaby wasn’t included as one of the choices, he is an interesting option. He’s definitely an out-spoken character with plenty of NHL experience, but I just don’t see ESPN selecting him. It does baffle me why the need for a big NHL analyst on a network that barely covers the sport anyway.

So there you have it. The bloodthirsty villagers finally have a suspect. Discuss! _uacct = “UA-1868762-1”; urchinTracker();