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Analyzing the Hextall Firing |
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When Ron Hextall was hired as the Flyers general manager on May 7, 2014, he laid out a vision for how he wanted to proceed with his new job. His main priorities were stockpiling the farm system through an emphasis on collecting assets, drafting and developing. Simultaneously, there was a multi-year emphasis for getting the salary cap under control.
"I like draft picks. I believe in building from the Draft and development," Hextall said. "We’re going to strengthen that part of it and hopefully develop a lot of players. It’s important in a cap world to develop players from within. ... So we’re going to try to build from within and keep the pieces that we draft."
Let it not be said that Hextall was not a man of his word. He stuck to that plan with very little deviation. He did a very good job on those fronts, too.
The farm system is in good shape, some players have graduated to NHL regular status and there are more on the way. The salary cap is also in pretty good shape moving forward. The problem is that the NHL team itself started out as a playoff bubble team when Hextall took over and, for various reasons, is still in that same realm four-plus years later with no signs of moving significantly upward in the immediate future with the same priorities being the overriding emphasis with little adjustment to them.
In terms of decisions geared toward immediate returns on the big club, there's not much to discuss. Apart from the signing of James van Riemsdyk this summer as a free agent, most everything the GM did -- certainly including the trade of Brayden Schenn for the first round picks the Flyers used on Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee -- was geared to his oft-stated goal of stockpiling assets and prospects.
In four-plus years, there were a few trades/signings of veterans, but they were almost exclusively for role players. The ill-fated rental of goalie Petr Mrazek last season was because the team was so decimated in net by injury, yet the off-season goalie plan ended up simply staying with the status quo and then scrambling to take Cal Pickard off waivers.
The Valtteri Filppula acquisition was a deal that moved out an aging vet defenseman (Mark Streit) for a stopgap aging veteran center plus a mid-range draft pick coming back. That deal actually served its purpose for a little while, although Filppula was far from a panacea.
The Scott Hartnell for R.J. Umberger trade early in Hextall's tenure was only partially about somewhat earlier cap relief but also partially about getting rid of a player whom Hextall did not feel was in line with various things he wanted to install internally within the team. That deal didn't work out well at all.
The trade that sent Vincent Lecavalier and Luke Schenn to the LA Kings was a good one for the Flyers. Lecavalier was at the end of the line in his career, and extremely unhappy. Schenn had been demoted out of the regular starting six on D. To get cap relief plus an NHL roster player (Jordan Weal) out of it was a good deal.
Hextall was also able to make a trade that got Arizona to the cap floor for a year by dealing a late-career Nick Grossmann and the retired Chris Pronger's remaining contract out. Forward acquisition Sam Gagner didn't work out particularly well during his one season in Philly, but the net result was cap relief.
But in terms of impact additions to the NHL roster.... well, there's JVR. The rest of the core was either already here or came up through the draft/ development process (and several of those guys are still works in progress or struggling this year.
Much like the Russ Farwell general manager tenure of the early 1990s when he stockpiled draft picks and revitalized the farm system (and eventually traded heavily from what he'd built in order to acquire the rights to Eric Lindros) but was unable to move the then-current NHL team forward very far, the fruits of these labors may not be reaped at the NHL level until the next regime is in place.
As for any decisions involving current player personnel and/or coaching staff, those will be left to the next general manager to determine what he feels is the best course of action. The next GM's short-term and long-term game plan will have to be articulated and meet with the team president's and CEO's approval before he's hired, but the specifics will be left to the next GM to work out on his own.
Nothing is set in stone. However, most GMs prefer to hire their own head coach and bring in their own supporting staff. That's how it often works. While I firmly believed that Dave Hakstol's job under Hextall was secure at least for the rest of this season -- and then a decision would be on an extension or to hire a different coach rather than go through a lame-duck season of a head coach in the final year of his contract -- there is no such security now. That's just how the business works. The same goes for the assistant coaches.
In terms of NHL level personnel moves, it very much remains to be seen what the next GM has in store. However, one decision that I suspect will be made fairly early on is whether to extend impending UFA winger Wayne Simmonds or to trade him for a young player or draft pick(s).
Leaving the Simmonds situation dangling into this season was risky. So, too was coming away from the offseason without a 3C, a revised immediate-term goalie plan, another defenseman of at least second-pair caliber or a proven PKing rotation upgrade. None of those items got crossed off the roster prep agenda this summer, and that is something for which the GM was fairly second-guessed because these needs were all rather clear cut. I talked about several of these matters in my earlier blog today before the news broke of Hextall's firing.
All in all, the news of Hextall's dismissal is somewhat surprising but not totally shocking the more one reflects on it. It's never a happy day when someone loses his job, especially an iconic playing figure in franchise history who was doing some good things in a front office capacity. But, in Philly, moving laterally at the NHL level in the name of moving forward for the future proved to be untenable four-plus years into the process without the end of the tunnel being reached.
At the end of the day, hockey is a business. Hextall knew that as a player and he knows it as a front office figure. I suspect he'll be back in the NHL as a GM somewhere else at some point.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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