Here's the full transcript, courtesy of the Flyers, from Ron Hextall's pre-draft news conference today at Skate Zone.
Much of it concerned things other than next weekend's upcoming NHL Draft.
Ron Hextall Press Conference – June 19, 2015 On the assistant coaches Dave and I went through the process of looking at the field and seeing what’s out there. Dave sat down with all our guys, between face-to-face and the phone, numerous times. In the end, we felt that this was the best staff that we could put together moving forward. The one thing I told Dave right from the start was I don’t want to saddle you with a staff, I want you to be comfortable with everybody you’re working with. So by no means was it me saying Dave, let’s keep the same staff together. As a matter of fact, we talked about the opposite – possibly making changes or bringing one or two guys back. But we’re here, and in the end we’re both comfortable with the same guys coming back. I think when you look at a staff, you want a defenseman to run your defense and to work with your defensemen. You want an offensive mind on your staff to help the power play and the offensive side of the game. And then the other guy typically is a forward and a little bit of a sounding board for players, a cushion, a good guy with personality. That’s kind of what we had. When Dave and I discussed what we wanted in a staff, those were the kind of things that we wanted. We did look outside, but in the end we felt very comfortable with the staff now. A lot of it was with Dave’s input. On the search for a goalie coach We’ve dabbled in that a little bit, but certainly not near completion. On what happened with Terry Murray I sat down with Terry at the end of the season in Allentown. I told him he was not going to be a candidate for the head coaching job, and he said he didn’t expect to be. I asked him, I said Terry, you’ve been around a long time and I have a lot of respect for you. What do you want to do? He said I really want to finish my career in the NHL. That’s fair. He said I don’t think I’ll get a head coaching job, but I would like to finish in the NHL. So I said OK, I’m not sure what’s going to happen with our staff, but we’ll keep you in mind, and I’ll certainly put your name out there for other jobs. So as we went through the process, Dave met with Terry. I know they had a great meeting. Dave was very impressed, and we actually talked about possibly having another guy on the staff. But when we talked it through, is there a point where you can have too many coaches, and we both felt yeah, there was. So we both felt comfortable with three assistant coaches, and that’s the direction we went. I got a call from [Tim Murray] and I called a few other guys just to make sure they knew Terry was out there. I gave them permission to talk to him, and in the end Buffalo called and wanted to interview him. I said that’s fine, just call me back – I don’t want you to hire him until we figure it out. Then they called, and I actually talked to Dave two nights ago when we made our final decision. Terry had actually left me a message that night that Buffalo called and was considering hiring him, so the timing was impeccable. I talked to Terry the next morning and said we’re going to stick with the same staff, and he ended up going to Buffalo. Terry Murray, first of all, he’s a very quality man who I have a lot of respect for and I think probably all of you guys do, and certainly every player and every person who’s ever worked for him. He’s a good man and I couldn’t be happier for him to finish his career in the NHL. You get by the professional part and you get to the emotional part, so if we’re not going to hire him, does he end up back in the American league… I think Terry deserved better than that. So I couldn’t be more thrilled for him. On how much things will change with the coaching staff under Hakstol’s system They’re not going to be near the same. There’s a lot of different dynamics. Dave’s going to put guys in certain roles. But philosophically, he’s different. So it’s going to change a lot. The assistants are a part of it. They’ve got to understand that Dave’s running the show here and essentially, what he wants you to do, that’s what you’ve got to do. That’s what his conversation was with the guys. You change your head coach, you’re changing a lot. Was Hakstol comfortable with the idea of a co-head-coach? He was comfortable with Terry Murray. I can tell you that. It just came down to do we have a four-man assistant staff or do we keep it to three? Terry was in it right to the end. There’s a lot of factors that go into choosing coaches and how they fit… do they know your team? There was a couple other guys in the mix as well, but Terry was there right to the bitter end. On bringing in guys from North Dakota We talked about him bringing in his guys, and he wanted to. In the end, he was so comfortable with the guys we got. I want to say he met with everybody face-to-face, a couple guys more than once, and then he talked on the phone. He did his homework, and then he’d check in with me and we’d talk. Like I said, I wasn’t going to say OK Dave, here’s your three assistant coaches. That’s not fair. But the comfort level for him with the guys we had in place was at a high level. He had to make me comfortable that this is the right way to go. This happened after he talked to two guys on his North Dakota staff? You’d have to ask him that. I think one guy was named head coach almost instantaneously. So I’m not sure he had many discussions. There was a report he offered jobs to two of his assistants? You’d have to ask him. I don’t believe so. Was Terry not a candidate to be one of three – if he was coming, he was going to be a fourth? Not necessarily. You were sorting through who’s going to come back, and there was nobody necessarily for sure. I wanted Dave to have a comfort level. He had a comfort level with all four guys. Then you try to piece it together. He had a comfort level with a couple other people too. There’s a fit with a coaching staff. Again, defensemen, offensive, forward, another guy who’s a bit of a buffer., typically a good guy. The guys we had in place, like I said, he was very comfortable it. He had a lot of say in this, and we worked together on it. Terry was absolutely in the mix just as one of a pool of people. What did he like about the three assistants? I think he felt like they fit the roles. The first thing we did was broke down the roles of how he sees assistant coaches and how I see them. We were pretty much on the same page. Defenseman who runs the D, works with D in practice, teaches the D, goes over video with the D, essentially in charge of the defense, in terms of making them better, having a lot of input on the pairs, the ice time. Then again, you want the offensive mind to help the power play, work with your forwards and scoring, we talked about the shootout. You want an offensive mind on your staff. The other guy, obviously Lappy, who’s a really good guy, the players feel like they can go to him, he can explain nuances of the game, he can even be a little bit of a buffer between the head coach and the players. Lappy’s that type of guy. When Dave and I had our initial conversation, it was kind of like OK, let’s not make changes for the sake of making changes. Let’s make changes to get better. In the end, neither of us felt like we were going to get better by making changes. It wasn’t like we just grabbed three guys and put them together. Dave did his due diligence and put one guy in place, shortly after another guy in place, and then the third guy. It wasn’t like OK, let’s bring them all back. It was kind of one piece at a time, and let’s piece it together, and that’s the way it worked out. How might responsibilities change? That’s a better question for him. We had long discussions on it. He’s got a lot of really good ideas, but I think he’s going to probably… Dave’s got a way of ‘this is your responsibility, this is yours, this is yours…’ everybody’s got their departments, but then they come together for discussions. I really like the way he thinks. He’s a deep thinker. So let’s put four lines together and make sure we’re doing the right thing here, and then we’ll move on. He’s got a real kind of a team concept down there with the coaches, which I think is going to be great. On who runs what on special teams You’d have to ask Dave. Obviously [Joe Mullen] was doing the power play. I think the penalty kill Lappy’s going to have some say, probably Gord too, but that’s a better question for him. On the draft – is there anyone that you would consider trading up for? I think everybody knows the top two players in the draft are special. I think after that, there’s arguments… I think a lot of the hockey world has a pretty solid #3, but when you get by that, I think there’s a lot of guys that are similar level players. Different identity, maybe different positions, different type of player, but they’re similar level of players. So to move from 7 to move up, we would consider it at the right price, but I’m not sure it’s worth it just because I think you’re going to get a similar level player that you would at those other picks. Would you consider trading down? I guess if someone threw something really stupid at you, but I don’t anticipate moving down. On Hakstol’s involvement in the draft He doesn’t know the players. You’ve got to be out there. We’ve got guys out on the road seeing 350 games. Philosophically Dave and I are on the same page in terms of players. He’s got enough on his plate. On whether he’s happy Hakstol saw it his way on the assistants I didn’t really want him to see it my way... I wanted him to see it his way. It’s pretty hard to argue with Mully’s track record. The power play’s been successful. We’ve got some good pieces there, no doubt about it. But it’s been really successful. At the start of the process, Dave and I sat down and went over all of our coaches, where I felt like they fit and how they coached and what the responsibilities were, and he took it from there. He got a little bit of background information from me, and he went and did what he had to do, did his research. He went through it too. It wasn’t just like OK, let’s bring them all back. He went through a process, and he should have. He needs to be comfortable with everybody and know that everybody would fit in the kind of roles that he saw. Do you think having these guys back helps the transition? Probably not a factor that played into it. I think there’s a certain comfort level to that, but the head coach is still changing, so I think the biggest thing there is that these three guys know our team, they know our players, they know the lines that work together, they know the D pairs that work together. So I think there’s some education there for Dave that will be valuable. Players, new head coach coming in, it’s a new guy. Possibly a factor though. How important is the goalie coach hire? That’s pretty much on me. I’ll be honest with you - with the head coaching thing, we’ve had amateur meetings, we’ve had pro meetings… I have had zero time to get into that. I have been kinda quietly putting together a list when names come up and stuff, but I haven’t dug too far into that. I have some ideas, but that’s about as far as it is right now. We’ve got work to do there. Would you like to get forwards in the top picks? We’re going to take the best player. You start looking at fits and stuff like that, you go by a player that’s a better player. In the end, I don’t believe in that. So we’re going to take the best player. How much more unpredictable might this draft be than other drafts from 3-6? Very unpredictable. I think they typically are, but it’s very unpredictable who’s going to go 4, 5, 6. You put your list together 1 through 7. We’re going to get one of them. What would it take for you to get one of the top two picks? I don’t think that’s possible. How important is this draft in your grand vision for the team down the road? Huge. This is a very critical draft for us. I think one of the more critical drafts in years. We’ve got to hit. We have to hit here. We do have a lot of picks, and we have some holes to fill. We need to keep young players coming. So this is a critical point for us, that’s for sure. How many NHL players out of 10 would you consider a successful draft? I’d like to bat 1000, but those are high expectations. It’s hard to say – 1 in 10 [from 2006] and Giroux’s the only guy [left in the organization], but are there other players you traded? A player’s an asset, if you get right down to it. Out of those 10, if a player’s playing in the league, then essentially you hit. So I don’t know… it’s probably fair to hope we get three or four players out of this draft. On the philosophy of building from within I’ve always believed in it, but I think since the cap came in, you’ve really got to believe in it, because I think it’s the only way to be successful over a long period of time. I really do. Free agency is a tool, but it’s only a tool. You can’t build a team through free agency. We have a cap. We have a hard cap. I think you look at Chicago, you look at LA, you look at Tampa, they’re built through the draft. Draft and develop. We’re not reinventing anything here. It is what I believe in and it’s what I’ve always believed in, but I think now it’s even more important than it was certainly pre-cap. I know the feeling when you’re 18 years old and you get drafted by a team. There’s a bond there immediately that is attached to you. You take ownership in the team, the organization. There’s something special there. I would like in three or four years to have a lot of home grown players, a lot of our picks on your team. There’s something special there. Your first team is kind of like your first girlfriend. How do you view the role of free agency? It’s a tool. It’s a hole-filler. You say OK our team is really good, you put it up on the board and say OK we have a slight weakness here ,and you try to fill those. You can’t grab four or five guys every year and try to be successful. I just don’t believe in it. It’s a small tool that can help. You can fill that last box you have to make yourself a top contender, but you can’t build like that. On free agency in the past Pre-cap, it was great. We could spend more money than other teams. Hey, I was here. It was awesome. When you could outspend teams, it was great. Mr. Snider wanted to win. You could add a guy in a trade that made whatever… it was awesome. When the cap came in, you have to adjust and adapt. That’s what we’re doing. Trust me, that doesn’t mean we don’t want to win this year, we don’t want to make the playoffs. Damn right we do. And we expect to. We added a guy like Medvedev to get better this year, not for any other reason. So our philosophy in terms of winning, we still want to win. We want to win every year. I think this franchise has been second to Montreal [all-time] in winning percentage. That’s important. That’s a tradition we want to continue. We don’t want to accept mediocrity. We don’t want to accept missing the playoffs. That’s not what we’re about. So we’re going to continue that philosophy of trying to win every year. But the big change will probably be just that that we’ve got to be patient as well. It doesn’t mean you can’t be patient and try to be the best you can be every year. That’s what we’ll be doing. How important is it that you have a defenseman on this team that can help your young players? I think we’ve got some good guys on our team. Nick Schultz, if you talk to any of our players, they’ll tell you Nick Schultz is one of our top leaders. He’s a quiet guy, but he’s an absolute pro. If I’m a young defenseman, I’m watching Nick Schultz like a hawk. I think Mark Streit, he’s a proven, really good player for a long time. Mark cares. He’s another guy. We have those guys in our system here. Because of the depth of the draft, is your guy at 29 better than a normal 29? Yeah. I think our guy at 7 is too. I think our guy at 7, our guy at 29, absolutely. Without a doubt. We’ve got some guys at 29 we’re excited about. We don’t know how they’re going to fall. But it is. I believe in five or seven years we’ll look back at this draft and go wow. It’s a bumper draft. Scouts typically, like every year is a bad draft, and there’s one out of five where you say whoa, this is a good draft. Truly four out of five are typical drafts, but this is a really, really strong draft. I think there’s going to be a lot of players coming out of this draft, not only from the first and second round, even deeper than that. Thoughts on Kimmo I was sitting there after the game thinking they should make a movie. Seriously. Here’s this little guy who couldn’t’ play in the league years ago. We all forget about that. To see him have the career he had at that size points to his stubbornness, and I say that with the utmost respect. To battle and battle, and last summer what he went through, and thinking probably he wouldn’t play. And it took a lot of courage to come into my office too and say I want to go for one last shot. Even if you go somewhere, what are your chances of winning? Really? You’re going to move away from your family for three months, and you’re going to go to a team that you don’t know anybody from, and you’re going to try to win a Stanley Cup. And you haven’t played in eight months. There’s a lot of courage there. I really admire Kimmo. I couldn’t’ be happier. I think probably all you guys and the whole Delaware Valley and Finland and everywhere else is happy for this guy, because he’s a consummate pro. I guess in the end he got what he deserved. He deserved to win the Stanley Cup. Were you watching when he raised the Cup? I was. It was great. I couldn’t’ have been happier for the guy. Everything that he went through. Forget the small defenseman who couldn’t play at the start of his career. But to see what he went through last summer, and this whole year, and the dedication that he showed. He was in the gym five days a week, and I don’t know if you guys have ever been through rehab before, but five or six or eight months of rehab is like getting a tooth pulled every day. So to see him go through all that and end up with the Cup over his head… that was special. Are you going to give him a job in the organization? I don’t know. He’s gotta want to work. This isn’t your two hours of playing hockey anymore. But we’ll sit down and have a discussion and see where he’s at. Certainly if he wants to work here, there will be something there for him. *
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