Pryor, Hextall relationship forged in Philly
It took Ron Hextall less than three weeks to complete his “No. 1 priority.”
The Penguins hired Hextall in February, envisioning him as the general manager who could keep them in Stanley Cup contention now while also bridging the gap to the next era of Penguins hockey. To doit, he needed Chris Pryor’s help.
Their careers have been intertwined since their iron-pumping sessions on Long Island nearly 30 years ago. They teamed up again in Philadelphia, with Pryor having a say in the selections of many of the contemporary Flyers you’ve loathed the most. When Hextall was the GM, Pryor was seen as his
right-handman.
“Chris has a really good hockey mind, first and foremost. Second, his work ethic is unmatched,” Hextall said. “When you come into a new situation and are looking to beef up your staff, you know certain people. … He’s been really good for us.”
The team’s new director of player personnel, Pryor oversees their scouting efforts in North America and Europe, in addition to being consulted by Hextall for all NHL personnel decisions. His first NHL amateur draft with the Penguins is this weekend. It will be held virtually. Round 1was Friday, with Rounds 2-7 Saturday.
Restocking Pittsburgh’s prospect pool, widely considered to be one of the NHL’s weakest, will be no small task, especially with the Penguins still looking to win another Stanley Cup title with Sidney Crosby still in his prime. Pryor and Hextall are undaunted and in alignment when it comes to their vision for that.
“We always had a really good relationship. I think we see the game the same. I think we’re wired the same. I think we have the same beliefs, morals,” Pryor said. “There are a lot of similarities there, which makes for a good relationship.”
Their paths to Pittsburgh vastly differ, though. Hextall is a third-generation NHLer who after his standout playing career fast-tracked through the Flyers front office. Pryor was a late starter and a late bloomer as a player and would take on a few roles with New York before finding his calling as an amateur scout.
Opening the door
Pryor, now 60, grew up in St. Paul, Minn. He didn’t begin playing organized hockey until third or fourth grade. His sophomore year at HillMurray, the same high school Jake Guentzel later attended, Pryor was a scrawny JV defenseman. He then shot up about five inches, switched to forward and became a varsity standout.
He didn’t get an offer from Midwestern powerhouse schools Minnesota and Wisconsin. But Pryor garnered interest out East. He picked New Hampshire, which was coached by the legendary Charlie Holt, an innovator anda “gentleman.”
“He was not as renowned as coaches like Herb Brooks or Bob Johnson, but from a hockey mind and seeing the game and thinking outside the box, he was right in that group,” Pryor said. “He was very successful at UNH and very humble.”
Pryor, who moved back to the blue line his junior year, wentundrafted.
He caught the eye of John Mariucci, a Hockey Hall of
Fame builder, at a tryout for the 1984 U.S. Olympic team. He didn’t make the cut, but Mariucci recruited him to the Minnesota North Stars. Pryormade his NHL debut in 1984-85 and over the next six years skated in 82 games for the North Stars and the Islanders.
“I always thought hard work could maybe make up for some deficiencies. I never proclaimed myself to be a great player,” he said. “Even to this day, if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say you did all you could do for that day, then you can feel good about yourself. … I’ve always felt that’s an important quality.”
He spent the final three years of his playing career with the Islanders American Hockey League affiliate in Troy, N.Y. The head coach was Jimmy Roberts.
“Hard-nosed. Old-time hockey. Honest,” Pryor said. “I was a big Jimmy guy. I liked him. He just told you like it was. Some people like that. Some people don’t.”
In 1990, Roberts pulled Pryor aside and asked him to bea player-coach.
“It was appealing,” Pryor said. “At that time, I was thinking I wanted to become a coach. I give Jimmy all the credit. That’s where a door opened a little bit.”
A scout’s eye
Pryor did double duty for three seasons before retiring as a player in 1993. The Islanders hired him as an assistant coach for their minor league team in Salt Lake City. That would soon evolve into another dual role where he traveled to spend time with and train Islanders prospects such as Bryan McCabe and Todd Bertuzzi.
“If we weren’t the first to do that, we were pretty close,” he said. “I really enjoyed that player development role. To this day, I still think it’s very valuable. … It goes a long way for them when you show them thatthe organization cares.”
During his first season with the Islanders, he also traveled to New York to assist the NHL club with strength and conditioning work. Their goalie was some guy named Hextall. The seeds of their relationship were planted in
that weight room.
The next year, the Islanders shifted Pryor into that roving player development role full time. He moved back to Minnesota and had three kids with Joannie, his wife of 39 years. In his downtime, he dabbled in amateur scouting.
Pryor got hooked and within a few years he was mostly scouting draft prospects. He still loves the feeling of walking into a rink, grabbing a roster and a cup of coffee and heading up into the stands to see if somebody will catchhis eye.
He believes amateur scouts, whether they work in hockey or football or basketball, have the toughest job in sports. You get limited time around a teenager and have to project, with the stakes incredibly high, who they will be as a player and a person at 25. He compared it to predicting how his own kids would turnout.
“I can have an educated guess at what they will become,” he said. “And as a parent I’m spending my whole life around my kids. You’re asking a scout to do this after interviewing him a couple of times and sitting up in the stands and watching him. Think about it in those terms, and you’ll realize how hard thejob is.”
The Flyers hired Pryor as a full-time amateur scout in 1999. Hextall, who had just put away his pads, joined the staff, too. He was on the pro scouting side. They didn’t cross paths often, bumping into each other occasionally at meetings or on the road. But they began to build a bond that made Pryor a priority in Pittsburgh.
Mining for diamonds
In Pryor’s two decades in Philadelphia, the Flyers had a high hit rate when picking late in the first round — a spot the Penguins hope to still find themselves in the coming years. Claude Giroux, Mike Richards, Justin Williams and Travis Konecny each were drafted in the 20s. Jeff Carter was another great selection at No. 11.
“We had a group of [scouts] that worked very well together. There was some symmetry [with the Penguins today],” he said. “There were noegos. We were just trying to find the best players out there with no bias in areas or territories.”
During Hextall’s second stint in in the Flyers front office, when Pryor was an assistant to the GM, they drafted Joel Farabee, Carter Hart, Ivan Provorov and Konecny.
“Chris was extremely valuable to the franchise at that point,” Hextall said. “He’s got a strong opinion, but he’s also open to other people’s opinions and working as a group. … Everybody’s got to be involved. They’ve got to feel an ownership.”
The Flyers missed the playoffs just four times during Pryor’s tenure, which ended in 2018. He was scouting for Nashville when Hextall came callingt his winter.
The past five months have been a “whirlwind” for Pryor. He has been trying to get familiar with Penguins scouts and assistant GM Patrik Alvin, the team’s previous amateur scouting director. Four new scouts were brought in. Pryor is still learning how the Penguins do things while also implementing his own processes.
Oh yeah, and the pandemic has made this draft evenmore of a crapshoot.
Despite all that, Pryor is confident the Penguins will hit on some picks. They have one in the second round, another in the fifth and three more in the seventh.
Pryor gave a glimpse into what Hextall and he will be looking to build here.
“As a group, as a philosophy, we’ll tend to take maybe a little bit less from a talent standpoint. … You need guys that play the game the right way and care about each other and will be competitive every time you step on the ice,” he said. “When you look at successful teams, those are the attributes that separate them.”