Hextall looking to inject youth into roster, not rebuild
Ron Hextall, more than three decades of The Flyers Way burnished into his brain, responded to the challenge last week as you’d expect.
He gripped his tool of trade and went slashing away.
No longer entitled to brandish a goalie stick, however, Hextall can only grip his management microphone and block verbal challenges. For the Flyers general manager, any suggestion thrown his way of focusing on the future rather than the challenge at hand has to be slashed at, then and there.
So in a wrap-up interview at the NHL Draft in Chicago last Saturday, Hextall responded, “Are we getting younger? Yeah, we’re getting younger. Rebuild — absolutely not.” Absolutely not. Not when this year’s combined cap hits for Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek alone ($16.5 million) represent nearly 25 percent of the Flyers’ payroll.
Not when those two aforementioned core forwards and Wayne Simmonds are all either in their primes or exiting primes.
Not when the employee handbooks at the SkateZone and Wells Fargo Center insist that people with GM fronting their titles are still expected to work under the daily credo of trying to win and win big now.
And yet for this first day of free agency, Hextall has all but confirmed that he plans to sign free agent backup goalie Brian Elliott, who on this team won’t really be a backup because his only competition, at least at season’s start, will be the oft-injured Michal Neuvirth. So while Hextall’s intent on filling a goalie hole, he’s really not improving his team. But at least no one will have the chance to fleece him, either.
“We’d be silly not to at least look at the market to see if there’s any good buys out there,” Hextall said Friday, “but I’m not sure July 1 is the day. The intent right now is to sign a goalie, and we’ll wait and see as the summer goes on if we add anybody else . ... I don’t want to bring in a 35-year-old veteran now and box out a young player.”
He would have tried to bring in 35-year-old Justin Williams — whom he should have brought back their to the Flyers a couple of years ago — had 25-year-old Jordan Weal not re-signed. But the young forward who in 23 games late last season showed the Flyers and their fans that he can be an effective scorer at the NHL level, too, finally agreed to a two-year extension Thursday night.
So went Willie (again), and back comes Weal ... part of the ongoing rebuild that Hextall refuses to call a rebuild.
Steve Mason knew exactly what it was when he closed the season looking like a goalie fighting for a Stanley Cup ... because he knew as a pending unrestricted free agent who never had one conversation about a new contract with his GM, he was auditioning for a job elsewhere over those final weeks.
Brayden Schenn knows it now. It took too long for the Flyers to commit longterm to him, finally doing so last July after Schenn had played his fifth and finest season with them. Schenn signed a $4-year, $20.5 million deal, then for a second straight season was one of the Flyers’ most productive players, scoring 25 goals and 55 points while playing multiple positions.
Of course, the analytical drones would say most of Schenn’s goals came on the power play, so he wouldn’t rate as a strong 5-on-5 player, and that’s why Hextall dumped him on St. Louis ... for the ridiculously overpaid Jori Lehtera?
No, he did so for the top-round draft picks that came along with it. By getting the 27th overall pick in the Schenn deal last Friday night, the Flyers took Morgan Frost. They also received another conditional top round pick next year.
Lehtera, who scored seven goals with the Blues last season, is no better than a checking line center who with the Flyers would play out of position on wing, all for the pretty cap hit of $4.7-plus. But his deal expires a year before Schenn’s does, which makes Lehtera’s money a touch easier to burn.
It’s highly unlikely Lehtera will ever see that last contract season with the Flyers, and there’s also no guarantee he’ll be with them when the season starts this October. But Frost could be a real center prospect by next year or certainly the year after, pushing those other Flyers forwards who are sliding out of their prime years.
By then, Travis Konecny and Weal should be anchoring the left sides of Flyers scoring lines, while Nolan Patrick should have healed from his sports hernia surgery in time proven his mettle as a rookie who would soon be a second-line center.
Don’t be surprised to see Weal, by the way, as the top-line left winger at some point this season, charged with the duty of reinvigorating Giroux’s career. All that projection leaves Hextall’s free agency Saturday with a light agenda — sign Elliott and split.
Elliott, 32, had a few good seasons in St. Louis and Ottawa but never really wrested a starting job anywhere. He had 45 starts in Calgary last season, but couldn’t convince the Flames to pay him for another year.
He comes cheaper than better free agent option Jonathan Bernier, 28. Bernier didn’t start in Los Angeles only because he was working behind Jonathan Quick. So Bernier went to Toronto and had two good seasons, a notso-bad third season and it was off to Anaheim, where he simply didn’t fit in. This guy could have been a No. 1 goalie for a Flyers team that ... well, it’s not rebuilding.
But his cap hit the last couple of years has been in the Mason neighborhood of $4.15 million, too rich to interest the Flyers, since Hextall has junior goalie prospects Carter Hart and Felix Sandstrom waiting in the wings. He also should be wondering if Anthony Stolarz can show this year he belongs in the Flyers’ crease instead of the Phantoms’ crease.
Even though Hextall was an assistant GM constantly praising Bernier’s work during the goalie’s time in L.A., he probably can’t see the presence of Bernier making a big difference with the fortunes of this Flyers team.
After all, they’re re ... tooling right now.