Patience for Hextall to act had worn thin upstairs
VOORHEES, N.J. >> Slowly, patiently, Ron Hextall started from scratch when asked to rebuild the Flyers. He began in earnest several weeks after his May 2014 promotion to the general manager’s chair, drafting defenseman Travis Sanheim, a smooth and offensively minded defender who could someday complement the prior year’s top two draft prospects, huge and lanky defenseman Sam Morin and the more physical defender Robert Hagg.
They were Paul Holmgren picks, which indicated that Hextall in that summer of four years ago was of the same mind as Holmgren had been: the defense needed to be rebuilt, and fast.
Though the fruits of his labor are still somewhat slow to take shape, Hextall has done just that, drafting Ivan Provorov in 2015 as an anchor on a mostly Philadelphia-developed defense. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s younger and faster and more skilled. And Hextall has similarly stocked skill in the forward cupboard while drafting a super goaltending prospect in Carter Hart. But the payoff on the ice has been slow in coming, and somewhere along the line, his building plan has detoured from that of his predecessor.
It is there that an aneurysm suddenly occurred, resulting in Hextall’s announced dismissal as GM via a cold Holmgren statement on Monday. It is there that a wide philosophical fissure has opened in a Philadelphia front office encased in chaos. You thought this team had become boring? Well, look at it now!
Team president Holmgren and Comcast-Spectacor CEO Dave Scott may or may not speak directly on that and more when they meet the media Tuesday morning at Wells Fargo Center. Either way, the questions won’t come with a pattern of patience. Question 1: Who’s the next GM? Question 2: Who will be the next head coach, and when?
Thirdly and perhaps more importantly is Question No. 3... What the hell happened? The only easy answer is Hextall’s oldschool ties to his former bosses, Holmgren and still-present senior vice president Bob Clarke, were countered by Hextall’s belief that his decisions were autocratic, true and unchangeable. He must have learned that during his years in Los Angeles under thenGM Dean Lombardi.
While Holmgren was still team president, he seemed to keep a distance from the hockey department the past few years, with Hextall first answering to Ed Snider and his lieutenant, the since-ousted Peter Luukko, then to Scott, who was brought in to replace Luukko, then took Snider’s role after the founder’s death in 2016.
This drama could have come down to Scott wanting a bigger role in the decision-making, and Hextall pushing back against that. That situation would have emulated Clarke’s first dismissal as GM in 1990, when the owner’s son, Jay Snider, decided to add power to his title of team president.
More likely, however, the famous stubborn streak that helped make Hextall such an impressive young player in the crease 30 years ago was never quite tamed. Even when it became clear in this, his personally picked head coach Dave Hakstol’s fourth season, that this group of Flyers were still on the road to mediocrity and irrelevance on the South Philadelphia sports landscape, Hextall either refused to budge or continued to take too much time to make a needed change behind the bench.
You couldn’t fault Hakstol for looking like the most uncomfortable guy in the room Monday.
“I haven’t had a chance to speak with Ron,” the Flyers (still) head coach said. “Obviously it’s a tough morning. It’s a tough morning for all of us and certainly for me personally. Ron brought me here to do a job. I’m going to continue to focus and work at doing that job to the best of my abilities. That’s what I told the players today; we have a job to do today, let’s go out and do it to the best of our abilities.
“We’re not where we want to be. We have a better hockey team than where we’re at, record wise. We all have to own that, we all can go out and do a little bit better.”
No matter how closely he mentored Hextall in the ways of front office business in the early 2000s, and despite the friendship the two forged over parts of four decades, Holmgren would certainly think the remains of a core group of leaders that he put together several years ago, now supplemented by talented young players, should do a whole heck of a lot better than their current holding pattern of 10-11-2.
Holmgren doesn’t have Hextall’s patience. He’s the guy who once fired one of the NHL’s more successful coaches, Peter Laviolette, all of three games into a season. He trained under Clarke, with both of them always appreciating Ed Snider’s signature shove to make moves for better or for worse.
This is not the Snider family team any longer. It’s not even Comcast’s team. Yet it likely would have taken a big NBC corporate-influenced demand, or perhaps a personal falling out, to make Holmgren pull the trigger on this decision.
But he has already stated that he’s looking for a replacement rather than wishing to take back the job himself. Media proposed candidates include Lombardi – though it makes little sense to replace Hextall with the very man who taught him front office patience in L.A. – along with longtime Minnesota GM Cliff Fletcher, former Carolina GM Ron Francis or a more intriguing choice, longtime Holmgren pal and noted tough guy Chris Pronger.
Oh, and that guy Bob Clarke is still hanging around the office, too. (Please, no write-in votes).
Whoever wins the honor of the hot seat will almost certainly pat Hakstol on the back and send him on his way. He stands at 132-97-40 over his threeplus seasons of head coaching work here, which takes on a less-glittering shine when you realize that means his Flyers teams lost five more games than they’ve won. And in the postseason, a truer indication, the Flyers are 4-8 with a playoff miss in the middle. Mediocrity personified. In a league where every team keeps a tight leash on the head coach, Hakstol seems to have been given more than enough rope with which to cast his resume. Yet his Flyers have long presented a dull product on the ice, with increasing numbers of empty seats at games and no indication of improvement anytime soon. Oh, and they don’t fight anymore, and don’t think that’s a small thing to the holdover fans in this area.
The prospect development, though? It’s still ongoing, still slowly building ... to what end?
Soon, there will be a new architect in town. What could he do but start all over again?