Holmgren doesn’t have his GM yet, but he has his coaching Hak
PHILADELPHIA >> As if firing onceclose colleague Ron Hextall wasn’t a big enough surprise, Paul Holmgren shocked the press conference masses Tuesday by pledging his presidential allegiance to head coach Dave Hakstol.
The man always identified as Hextall’s personal coaching choice has shown that he has the staying power to even survive the Flyers’ general manager’s sudden firing Monday. Of course, this being the trigger-happy business of NHL hockey, there are never any future promises.
“I like Hak. I think he’s a good coach,” Holmgren said. “I hope the new GM gives him every opportunity to evaluate everything. From how he prepares, how he coaches, how he does his matchups, stuff like that, and gives him a fair shot because I think he deserves that.”
Hakstol, plucked out of the University of North Dakota in 2015 by Hextall — who had gotten to know him when his son Brett played there a decade ago — went into a game with Ottawa Tuesday night brandishing a 132-97-40 record in three-plus seasons with the Flyers. In NHL math, that’s not bad. In reality it’s below .500. But Holmgren sees something in Hakstol that perhaps others (except for Hextall) don’t.
“I think he’s done a decent job under the circumstances that he’s coached under,” Holmgren said. “Particularly this last little while with the goaltending. Our top guys are hurt. We’re trying a lot of different things. Coaching in the NHL is not an easy job.”
But if Hextall, cheered for his work in restocking the Flyers’ depleted minor league and prospects pool over the past 4½ years, at least in part paid the price for the team playing below expectations, why wouldn’t have Hakstol have paid a similar price?
Ultimately, he may.
The way Holmgren and CEO Dave Scott see it now, however, the timing isn’t right for them to pull that certain plug. Nor should they, it seems.
“Well, he knows that we’re going to look for a GM, obviously,” Holmgren said of Hakstol. “All I could offer to Dave yesterday was my support. And I said if there was anything I could do to help you do your job better, please feel free to come and talk to me about it. (We) talked a little bit about his staff moving forward, that was about it. He knows, the players know, the coaches know, we all know it’s about winning. We haven’t been winning enough games lately, and we need to get back to work.”
Apparently, Holmgren feels that even with a terribly inconsistent level of play through a 1011-2 start for the team, and now with an ill-timed front office upheaval leaving the head coach without his management anchor, Hakstol has done and will do an admirable job.
“The way I look at it is we had
98 points last year. We were a playoff team. We got beat in a good series against Pittsburgh in six games,” Holmgren said. “The next step was to get better. We’re a quarter of the way through the season. Where are we at? This quarter, compared to the last, were kind of the same. I don’t know. I think right now, that’s a question for the next general manager, to evaluate where we’re at.”
Thus, Holmgren acknowledges that Hakstol’s future will largely be determined not only by how the Flyers perform for the rest of the season, but also how the next general manager judges Hakstol’s performance going forward. That’s why it seems logical that Hakstol, currently in the fourth year of what’s believed to be a five-year contract, would at least be allowed to finish out the season.
Then again, according to the preferred Holmgren-Scott timeline, that new GM appointment might only be a couple of weeks away. Holmgren, likely being assisted in his search by a couple of old management hands by the names of Bob Clarke and Dean Lombardi, said Tuesday that he has “a short list’ of GM candidates.
But he has no list of possible head coaching candidates. Not even with the Flyers standing at next-to-last place in the Eastern Conference entering play Tuesday against the conference-worst Senators.
“My feeling right now, under the circumstances with the injuries, in particularly to our goaltenders ... I think the coaching staff has done a decent job under the situations that they’re in,” Holmgren said. “Nobody’s getting off scot-free here. Everybody is being evaluated. Players know it, too. They know they’ve got to do a better job. That’s just the way it is. That’s life in the NHL.”
For now, at least, life is surprisingly good for one Dave Hakstol. Even if, in another way, he’s not thrilled with where he stands.
“They will make a hire on a new GM and whoever that is will come in and evaluate me as a head coach, and whether or not he likes what he sees and if I’m the right guy to work with him,” Hakstol said. “That’s a pretty reasonable scenario and sensible process to go through.
“Nobody’s happy with where we’re at, below .500. Yesterday was a tough day for everybody inside of our organization, inside of our dressing room. We show up, work, battle, push every day. But the bottom line is right now, we’re not where we want to be. So we’ve got to find ways to make our team a little bit better, and improve the things we’re doing on a nightly basis.”