I attended the Flyers' presser at the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday morning and there was an awful lot of equivocation in the answers from both Flyers' Governor Dave Scott and team President Paul Holmgren, but the bottom line of the decision was still pretty clear to me despite that. Hexy had a plan -- a pretty good one actually -- to build the Flyers back to a Cup challenging team, but it was also a long term one about which he was, as Homer put it "unyielding in his approach, unyielding".
The Flyers owner Comcast is a notoriously "bottom line" company, and the Flyers' numbers on that bottom line have been dwindling. Hexy did lots of good things to build for the future, but in five years the team's performance is not appreciably better, they have not won a playoff series during that time, and their performance this year has been "Jekyll and Hyde" schizophrenic at best with the three games in four days roller coaster last week -- a hapless 4-2 loss in Buffalo in Wednesday followed by an excellent 4-0 win over the charging Rangers on Black Friday which was then immediately followed by a catastrophically embarrassing "ept-free" 6-0 loss in Toronto on Saturday -- as a prime example.
Homer said the new GM will not come with any internal ties which would eliminate Dean Lombardi and Chris Pronger. My choice (probably a controversial one but at 73 and in my 50th season involved in hockey and the with the Flyers I think I am entitled to that) would be Brian Burke, a good friend of mine since he was a 22-year old fourth line RW for the AHL Maine Mariners in 1977.
POSTSCRIPT 2: Longtime Assistant GM and Director of Player personnel (20 years) Chris Pryor and assistant coach Gord Murphy (for defensemen) fired on Wednesday morning. Goalie Cal Pickard put on waivers.