Hextall ‘shocked,’ ‘stunned’ ... and still part of the ‘club’
VOORHEES, N.J. >> Ron Hextall admitted Friday he hadn’t slept much the previous two nights. He also confirmed that was nothing new.
“It’s a hard job,” the unemployed hockey executive said. “It’s every day, it’s 24/7. You go to bed thinking about things. You think about things in the shower. I can’t turn it off. I love my job. I loved it. Every minute of it. But it’s hard. You’re trying to manage today and tomorrow. You have a lot of staff members you try to keep happy. You have a team on the ice.
“When you’re driven, it’s fulfilling as hell. But it’s a hard job.”
Since his friend Paul Holmgren told him Monday morning that he’s no longer the Flyers’ general manager, Hextall said he’s essentially been trying to absorb the news.
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow morning,” he said. “I woke up the last couple of mornings like, ‘Man, what the hell am I doing? Aren’t I going to work?’ No.”
While he figures it might be another “few months” to fully come to terms with his dismissal, the time it took to find out wasn’t quite so drawn out.
Referencing his conversation with Holmgren, whom he’s known for more than 30 years, Hextall said it lasted “20 seconds.”
Twenty seconds to get fired?
“Yup,” Hextall said. Such is life for executives and coaches in this trigger-happy league, or at least here in the land of Flyer family folly, where connections to the franchise’s two Stanley Cups have never been broken. Or repeated.
The Flyers’ current team president (Holmgren), senior vice-president (Bob Clarke) and senior scouting consultant (Bill Barber) are all honored former players, have all been fired from here one time or another and have come back ... at least twice each.
So it’s quite the club Hextall just joined. He might not be sleeping much these days but at least he can gain strength from what he says were many phone calls and texted well wishes from people he knows around the NHL, especially fellow general managers.
Many of them have been fired before, too.
“I was humbled,” he said. In such a paranoid atmosphere, general managers only last longer than head coaches because GMs usually get the option to fire the coaches before they get fired. So fault Hexy for being slow at the trigger with current coach Dave Hakstol.
Holmgren, who helped promote Hextall into the GM’s chair in May 2014, is thus left to run things until the next guy arrives, perhaps sometime next week. Next Flyers management man up.
“I didn’t see this coming,” Hextall said. “I certainly didn’t feel any warnings. I was shocked and I was stunned.
“The only thing Homer said was your vision and my vision aren’t the same.”
He admitted that a 1011-2 team record when he received his 20-second see-youlater didn’t help his cause.
“Quite honestly, I was pretty excited about this season, too,” Hextall said. “If you think about it in September, we’ve got (Nolan) Patrick and (Travis) Konecny and (Ivan) Provorov and (Shayne) Gostisbehere and (Travis) Sanheim; all these young kids that should be better players and should be ready to take the next step. Then we added a guy (James van Riemsdyk) that scored 36 goals.
“I certainly expected to take a step this year and it’s disappointing as hell that to this point, we haven’t.”
That he is no longer able to help correct that, Hextall admitted, “hurts.”
“I was kind of hoping I’d finish my career here, get old. Or am I already old?” the 54-year-old old goalie said. “It’s been a tough couple of days. I think you guys all know how much love I have for this franchise. It happening here versus somewhere else? Yeah, that hurts.”
Then again, any job dismissal in this merry-goround league carries a consolation prize: You’re never alone, and there will likely be another day.
Maybe even in the same place.
“I don’t feel betrayed,” Hextall said. “I’m extremely proud of what we did here. Our staff worked so damn hard for four and a quarter years. We were making a lot of headway. Sometimes you don’t see it and I’m as disappointed as anybody by this season. I certainly wasn’t accepting of this season.”
Yet Hextall said he was surprised at stories that had seeped out indicating his supposed autocratic approach could rub the wrong way. He said the inference that he held on too tightly to his prospects rather than move to bring in veteran help was off base.
“I can assure you, I was being aggressive,” Hextall said. “If we would have had something that made sense for us, short term and long term, we would have done it.”
He apparently ran afoul of the organization’s beloved alumni, of which he’s a prominent member. When they had an alumni game against Pittsburgh in early 2017, he didn’t allow them to use the main locker room. He regrets that, saying, “I didn’t think it through.”
Since Clarke, Barber and Holmgren were involved in the festivities, that probably didn’t bode well. Other “charges” were more troubling.
“I didn’t micromanage,” Hextall said. “I hired good people and I let them do their job. I didn’t tell Hak who to play. We discussed, obviously, but I didn’t micro-manage.”
He says he talked to people all the time, even in a locker room that he seemed fully aware had its share of grumbles bouncing off the walls. It wasn’t “Ottawa Senators in an Uber” bad, but certainly there was some moaning.
So be it.
“I don’t run a country club,” Hextall said. “I don’t believe you win that way.”
Either way, he’s been shown the door. But like the others, he’s still a member of the club.
“I don’t hold grudges. They felt like they wanted to go in a new direction and that’s their right,” Hextall said. “I love the organization. I always will.”
An intrinsic part of the Flyers’ half-century-old story, Hextall says he’s looking forward to making up for lost time with his family, but he’ll probably be working elsewhere before long. He once left here for greener NHL pastures only to return again.
Connect the dots, and see the way they all come together again? That’s something that Ron Hextall isn’t about to address. Not now, anyway.
“It’s (been) four days,” Hextall said. “The first couple of days were just kind of like, I was in shock. Yesterday was a tough day emotionally ... so I have no idea.”