Here's the complete transcript of the Flyers news conference today on the hiring of Dave Hakstol to replace Craig Berube as head coach.
Courtesy of the Flyers:
Philadelphia Flyers Press Conference – May 18, 2015 Chairman Ed Snider President Paul Holmgren General Manager Ron Hextall Head Coach Dave Hakstol Ron Hextall On behalf of Mr. Snider, Paul Holmgren and the entire organization, we’re extremely proud and excited to name Dave Hakstol head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. Dave Hakstol Thank you Ron. Really I just wanted to start with some thank-yous. Obviously starting with Mr. Snider, Paul Holmgren, and to Ron, to have the opportunity to join the Philadelphia Flyers organization is an extremely proud moment for me. A couple of others… I want to mention my family. Without them I wouldn’t be sitting here and wouldn’t have a chance for success in this business. So my family, both back in Alberta as well as in North Dakota… a special mention for my wife Erin and our two kids, Avery and Brett, who are still back at home. Obviously it’s a special moment for our family. I really want to mention the University of North Dakota as well. So many great people back in Grand Forks, North Dakota that have had a huge influence, not just on my professional life but overall on my life over the past 15-20 years. I want to say thanks to an awful lot of people there. Too many to mention by name, but thank you to all of those people. And I am extremely proud to be sitting here today. Thanks. On the process of how Hakstol was hired RH: Well, I had some familiarity with Dave. My son obviously played for him at North Dakota. So in watching my son over the years I grew an appreciation for Dave, the way he coached. I thought about him long before this as a head coach in the National Hockey League. I believe he was destined for it. He’s got a lot of pro qualities. He’s got a lot of experience as a head coach. So I started going through the process here, the guy that I needed to get to know the most was Dave. We met for parts of four days, we were on the phone a lot, and everything checked out the way that we hoped it would check out. I had a list of things that I wanted from a head coach, and went down the checklist in my mind and every box was checked except for the NHL experience. Quite frankly, for me, that was one that was least important. No different than a rookie player. Does Dave have things to learn? Absolutely. He’ll be the first to admit. He’s got a lot of time here to kind of get to know the league, get to know our team, familiarize himself with the area, look into forming a staff… we’ve both got a lot of work to do, but he’s got a tireless work ethic and I think the biggest thing is his knowledge of the game is extremely high-level. So I feel very comfortable with where we’re at. I won’t say it was early in the process because like I said, I had to get to know him I guess intimately, and as we went through the process it just kept coming to me that this is our guy. On whether the hire is connected to the team’s young talent coming along faster RH: No, it certainly doesn’t mean any young player will get here sooner or later. It was one of the attractive things, that Dave has coached an age group from really 18 to 24, 25. That was one of the things you think about, yes. We have a lot of young players on our team, but we also have a number coming, so that was a factor for sure – how has Dave developed young players, how has he integrated young players into his lineup, how you bring players together. I think one of the strongest points that he has is his ability to push people. He pushes players, he gets the most out of his players. Again, you’re going through your long list of things and it’s one of the things you think about. He’s a very well-rounded coach. He was at North Dakota for 11 years as a head coach… that’s a lot of experience. Again, I’m very comfortable with where we’re at today. On what track record tells him it’s going to be OK to have a college coach with no pro experience RH: In the end, when you’re making decisions like this, you take all the information, you process it – and it was a process – and you weed through it, and you make a decision with your gut. This is a gut decision and I feel extremely comfortable with it. As we worked through the process, he became our #1 guy. Towards the end that he was the target all alone. Dave, there’s a difference between a college and pro player. What do you think your adjustment has to be? DH: Well, there’s going to be several adjustments along the way, but I think number one, I believe in what we do and I believe in the things that I do, and I’m not going to change that. Do I need to alter the delivery of the message – maybe a little bit. The fact that I do not have experience at this level – I’m not going to pretend that I do. But I do have an awful lot of confidence in terms of knowing the game well, knowing how to relate and communicate with players, and that’s one of the first things as I get started here – and probably one of the most important things as we move through the summer – is communicating with and getting to know a lot of our players. That’s going to start to build the foundation for the plan that we have moving forward. Why do you think not many coaches have jumped from college to the NHL? RH: Well, it’s a big jump. I think that’s fair to say. Trust me, I looked at the track record. Dave and I have talked about it. It’s a big jump. Obviously you’re taking athletes that aren’t paid, athletes that are paid. We’ve talked long and hard about that too. I don’t know the reasons necessarily. I delved into a lot of the people that were and weren’t successful. Dave, on his own, has pro attributes. To me, I looked at the success rate, or lack thereof. That came into my thought process early in the evaluation process here. I had a lot of questions for Dave in terms of [things like] the schedule – 82 games vs. low 40s. There’s an adjustment there. We talked about a lot of things, and I was very comfortable with his answers. He’s very direct, and he knows what he believes in. Like I said, in the end it comes down to a gut feel. Can Dave handle NHL players, the schedule, the differences in collegiate level vs. this level, and every time I asked myself the question, the answer was yes. You’ve got a lot at stake on this gut feel. RH: Well, you’ve got to understand, that gut feel comes from all the information that you went over. We spent parts of four days together, we spent a lot of time on the phone, there were a lot of questions – a lot of the questions you guys are asking, we’ve kind of been through it all. In the end, do you believe in the guy or do you not? Every head coach in the NHL at some point is a rookie. Right? That’s reality. Some of them go through the American league, some of them don’t. Some of them are NHL assistant coaches. Quite frankly, if someone said to me you can bring in an NHL assistant coach or you can bring in a guy that’s been in college for 11 years as a head coach, I’ll take the head coaching experience. That’s the valuable part. If Dave had never been a head coach, different conversation. Being a head coach, being the guy in charge, making the tough decisions, putting your lines together, the gut feels you have on putting the right players out at the right time… he’s got all that experience. Yes, it’s at a different level, but he’s got that experience. On working with NHL players RH: I think they’ll figure out in a hurry here who’s in charge. Dave’s a very take-charge guy. I can assure you of this. He’s got an immense amount of respect around the hockey world. I’ve actually found that out in the last two hours, how many people respect him, believe that he’ll do a great job for us. He played pro hockey, so he understands pro hockey. Like I said, some of the intangibles that he has are outstanding. His hockey mind is outstanding. Dave, what was your initial reaction? DH: Well, in our initial conversation, I had great interest in getting to know Ron more and getting to know more about the pathway. I think as we spent more and more time together, whether in person or on the telephone, I think we found a lot of similarities in mentalities, in philosophies on the game and on other things. As we went further and further getting to know each other, it not only made a lot of sense, it became an exciting opportunity – one that I think we both worked our way through with a lot of detail and led to this outcome. Ed – how do you view this hire? Ed Snider: I don’t really know that this is a break. Yes, college is somewhat of a break. Mike Keenan coached in college as well as in the minors, and was an outstanding coach for us. Fred Shero never played or coached in the NHL, and he was a great coach for us. We have a lot of history with people that come and coach for us that have never coached in the National Hockey League. I think that Ron is very thorough. I’m a big supporter of everything he’s doing. I’m very, very excited about our future. Ron said he spent parts of four days, I think he spent even more time than that with Dave. No one could have been more thorough in their investigation of what we thought of Dave. Then I was introduced to him. He’s a solid guy and I think we’re really lucky to have him. Dave, have you thought about the intangibles that this job will require as far as the city, the fan base and the media? DH: That was one of the big attractions as we talked further and further. Ultimately the history and tradition of this organization is something that’s very special. With that comes a lot of expectations, I think we all know that. That’s one of the real exciting things about this opportunity. What is your coaching style? DH: I don’t know if I can sum it up in one word. I can tell you the way I approach my business on a daily basis is in a very direct manner. I think expectations are quite simple of myself, of my staff and our players. Maybe to sum up in one word, accountability to one another, to our organization. In terms of style of play, the game is so fast. When you see games today, it’s played at such a high speed. You’ve got to be as good a team without the puck, you’ve got to work and play fast without the puck and with good structure. It’s about transition. But you’ve got to have the puck, you’ve got to get the puck in order to be able to transition up ice. You’re going to see with me an expectation that our defensemen are involved in an awful lot of our play in terms of our play with the puck. I think it’s essential both getting up the ice as well as in the zone. How do you think the current roster fits with that style? DH: I don’t think I’m ready to comment too much on what I’ve seen from last year. That’s something I have to get into now as we move into the summer and something that I will spend an awful lot of time on, both myself as well as along with our staff, evaluating exactly what our group is and from there forming the plan as we move forward. How are you different as a coach now from when you took the UND job? DH: I don’t know any coach that’s in the business that’s not excited to get better every day. We’re in it to have our teams improve, to help our players improve, and no different for ourselves. I’m a much different coach. Certainly experience plays a large factor in that. As you go through the different things not only in the game but in life, you change your perspective and your outlook on everything. I would say I’m obviously much more settled than the guy who took the job at North Dakota 11 years ago. On balancing the expectation of winning with building a team DH: Number one, winning is a mindset. Our job as a staff is to win with the group of players that we have. Obviously you talk about development, and that’s one of the things that as we have gone into each and every year, we’ve gone into each year with a mindset of getting better every day. You have to do that at the college level. You start with a new group of players, a lot of times you have new players learning new systems, and some players grasp things immediately and very quickly, others take time. Development is always part of the process. But at the end of the day, winning is the goal. On his confidence that his coaching style will transfer over to pros from college Well, that’s a fair question, and it’s something that I’m very confident in. It’s going to take an awful lot of communication. I have to get to know our players, and I want them to get to know me. I want to have some clear expectations of the way we’re going to play the game. Obviously we want players that are buying into the philosophy of winning and what that takes. Really when you break that down, it comes down to doing all the little things day after day. Taking care of the details, being disciplined enough to do them day in and day out, and knowing and understanding why you’re doing them is going to be very important. That’s something that I’m confident that I can convey to our group. Have you talked to any of your former players now in the NHL about what it would take to be a pro coach? DH: No, I’ve never talked to them. We’ve talked hockey and we’ve done it in a relaxed setting, but I’ve never really sat down in that type of a setting. What are the status of the assistant coaches? RH: Dave and I are going to sit down later today and start to gather ideas about what we want, and we’ll form a staff from there. All the assistants now are still part of our staff, and when we move forward here we’ll let everybody know. Dave and I, through our talks, it’s very important to him to have the right people, the right fit on the staff, and I feel the same way. We’re going to again get together on that today and start working our way through it. All those guys will have a chance to stay, but again we’ll see when we get through it. How many other candidates did you talk to? RH: I don’t really care to go through the process. Like I said, from the start when I started delving into it, talking to Dave, meeting with Dave, it became apparent that he was the guy. Dave’s also the least high-profile guy. A lot of the other guys, you do a lot of your homework, your background checks and all that stuff. We did a lot of homework on a lot of people. But like I said, Dave was a guy I had to get to work on. I knew him to say hi to him and chat with him for a couple minutes, but quite frankly that was pretty much the extent of it. Did you have a conversation with Mike Babcock? RH: I’m not going to comment on the process. We had our guy and he’s sitting to my immediate right here. How has college hockey changed in that so many guys are coming out of college to the NHL, which didn’t used to be the case? RH: That’s probably a better question for Dave. I don’t think when you talk to hockey people, there’s no poor route, whether it’s the junior route or the college route. The college route probably gives you a couple more years to grow into your body, to mature, to get stronger. So you see some of the college guys come out, they’re a little more mature physically than the junior guys. I’m not sure I have the other part of that answer. The other thing I’d say in terms of Dave’s lack of experience… I wasn’t going to choose the coach that was the people’s choice, the popular choice. I was going to pick the coach that I felt like for this franchise from today, next year and moving forward here is the right coach, and Dave is the right coach for this franchise at this point. What was the process like going to Ed Snider? RH: He was great. When we started going down this path I told him kind of the short list that we had compiled. He said to me, get the best coach and the right coach. That was it, nothing else was talked about in terms of details. Get us the right coach, and we got him. Did you get any input from your amateur scouts? RH: I think the hockey world likes the way North Dakota plays. I remember hearing Dave eight or nine years ago say we play a real fast game, and that’s the way the game has gone. When you think about it in hindsight he was probably ahead of his time there. So I had eyes on him, yes. I talked to Chris Pryor and a number of guys from our scouting staff, and I think everybody feels the same way. They played as pro a game as you can play at North Dakota. Dave, do you take the lack of experience as an affront to you? DH: No, absolutely not. I think I said it a little bit earlier, I don’t have experience at this level, so I’m not going to pretend that I do. I do have a great deal of confidence in what we do, in what my philosophies are, and in the fact that they’re going to be successful here. You have to go out and do the work. That’s the bottom line. I can sit and say whatever I want here today. Bottom line is I have to go out and do the work. You roll up your sleeves, you go out and that starts as we walk out of this room today. Preparation, hard work, detail – those are all things that produce results. Those are things that as I said start right now today. Dave, have you had past NHL interviews or chances to leave before? DH: I guess I don’t want to get into too many previous things, but yeah, it’s been a goal of mine. I think the most important thing there maybe to recognize is I loved the position that I was in at the University of North Dakota. In order to consider leaving my role there, it’s a tough question to answer, when’s the right time to leave. I can tell you that the opportunity that Ron and the rest of the Flyers organization have presented here is that right opportunity. A lot of it comes down to the time that I spent with Ron and other members of the staff here. A big part of it also is the history and tradition and how much meaning that has in this city. Obviously it’s an excitement about the group of players and some of the guys coming that also plays a large role into it. Paul, does this hire remind you of any other hire or coach? Paul Holmgren: No, I think Ron alluded to it earlier, the way North Dakota plays has kind of been on everybody’s… they play a pro style game and they have for a number of years, and that’s a credit to Dave. I think we all see it. It’s a fast game, and it’s getting faster. We’re all excited about today. Ron, was it important to get fresh blood in here? RH: Not necessarily. We went out looking for the right coach for this organization to move forward, and Dave was the right guy. The experience thing, where a guy’s been – quite honestly, I was looking for the best coach, and that’s who we feel like we got. Ed, does Ron’s bold move make you more comfortable about the decision you made to hire him? ES: Absolutely. Ron thinks outside the box, but he also is a very deep thinker. I have great confidence in this hire and the future under Ron’s guidance. *
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