Post-Hextall Press Conference
Tuesday night's game against Ottawa has been overshadowed by yesterday's announcement of the firing of Ron Hextall as general manager. At 11 a.m. in the Hall of Fame Room at the Wells Fargo Center, team president Paul Holmgren and Comcast Spectacor CEO David Scott will address the media.
On Monday, Holmgren issued a straight-to-the-point statement that he and Hextall were no longer in philosophical agreement about the direction of the organization. There were issues related both to hockey operations and other day-to-day management practices. Holmgren, as a longtime NHL general manager and previous assistant GM, believes as team president in giving his GM a lot of leeway to run things as he sees fit.
However, the leeway isn't endless. One need not read between the lines to see that the working relationship between Holmgren and Hextall deteriorated over time, and that Hextall was not about to alter any aspect of an approach that he adamantly felt was working well in the big picture. As with any human and business dynamic, there's a lot of gray areas in between the black and white of side A's position in a disagreement versus side B's.
Keep this in mind as well: Everyone answers to someone within a sports organization. The head coach answers to the general manager. The GM is answerable to the team president. The team president, like the others, is answerable to the CEO/chairman.
When Paul Holmgren made the transition from general manager to team president, he took on a whole different set of challenges. As Jay Greenberg alludes to in his
blog about Hextall's dismissal, the crux of that challenge comes down to maintaining the spirit of the things that set the Flyers apart from other organizations not just in terms of going all in to contend but also in terms of how relationships (financial relationships, fan interest and community activity, media relations, treatment of Alumni as lifelong members of the Flyers family and more) but also keeping these practices viable within today's society and cognizant of leaguewide realities.
Contrary to speculation, Hextall was NOT fired over a refusal to fire head coach Dave Hakstol. If the GM's choice of head coach -- and assistants, in this case, because Hakstol is the rare NHL head coach who has never handpicked any of his assistants -- were the primary issue, Hakstol and/or assistants would have also been let go on Monday.
However, Hakstol's job just went from reasonably secure to being in grave jeopardy. He is now basically where Craig Berube was in 2014-15; facing a major uphill fight to be retained. It will be up to the next general manager to select the head coach. Almost without fail, a new GM wants to select his own head coach. That is beyond Hakstol's control. All he can do is try to win as many games as he can between now and when that decision gets made.
When that time comes, some assistants may be retained, reassigned or let go at that time as well with the head coach getting to pick a trusted assistant or two of his own preference. The current Flyers are an exception to the latter part of the equation.
As noted above, Hakstol still has most of the assistants he inherited at the time he took over as head coach. The only staff change has been the replacement of longtime forwards/power play coach Joe Mullen with Kris Knoblauch in 2017. But Knoblauch and Hakstol had never previously worked together, so that was likely a Hextall-recommended recommendation of a bright young coach who'd had a lot junior hockey success and with whom Hakstol was agreeable to working.
All of the other current assistants were already in place when Hakstol came aboard as head coach. Defensemen coach Gord Murphy was hired by Hexy before Craig Berube's final Flyers head coaching season in 2014-15. Goalie coach Kim Dillabaugh, formerly the LA Kings goalie development coach, was hired by Hextall in the summer of 2014 to fill the vacancy left by the previous departure of Jeff Reese. Penalty killing coach Ian Laperriere, the last remaining Holmgren-selected assistant, transferred from a player development coaching role to an NHL assistant in 2013-14.
The decisions on head and assistant coach retention, reassignments or dismissals will be left by Holmgren in the hands of the next GM, along with player personnel matters including the decision of whether to extend Wayne Simmonds' contract or trade the impending unrestricted free agent. It is inevitable that there will be changes made, although some of these decisions may be deferred until after the season.
The Flyers assistant general managers, Chris Pryor and Barry Hanrahan, predate Hextall's GM tenure in the organization by many years albeit with different job titles over time. Hanrahan, who has been with the Flyers since 1997, has worn many hats. He is now the club vice president on top of being assistant GM. His main area of focus over his years as assistant GM has been CBA compliance and salary cap management. In the case of Pryor, "Sarge" started out here as a scout 20 years ago and worked his way up to director of scouting and then overseer of hockey operations.
Strong working relationships with both Pryor and Hanrahan has been a fairly constant facet of each of the last three GM tenures. Bob Clarke respected both men, Holmgren had a lot of trust in both, and Hextall promoted both guys. The trust has always stemmed not just from their knowledge within their roles but from the fact that neither guy is out to usurp his boss in the interest of becoming the GM himself. While a new GM might want to name his own assistants or add a personal adviser, ala Dean Lombardi to Hextall, there is also something to be said for having experienced and trustworthy assistants already in place.
Holmgren indicated yesterday that he has already begun the search for a new general manager. Whether he will hire an internal candidate or hire from outside the organization remains to be seen.
Yesterday, there was immediate speculation that Lombardi, who holds the title of "senior adviser to the general manager", would be the choice. He is already on the payroll and would not require the Flyers to compensate another organization. He's already familiar with the organization from top to bottom. Even more important, Lombardi has the cache of winning two Stanley Cup as general manager of the LA Kings and previously having built the San Jose Sharks from scratch into contender status during the pre-cap era.
I'd be surprised if the organization didn't at least interview Lombardi to see what his thoughts are at this point. However, hiring Lombardi might be a rather awkward ask.
Lombardi and Hextall are very close, personally, professionally and in terms of their managerial philosophies. They go way back together to Hexy's early post-playing career days when he and Lombardi were working on the scouting side of Flyers hockey operations. It was Lombardi, hired as LA's general manager, who hand-picked Hextall as his assistant GM and mentored him. In turn, as Flyers GM, Hextall brought Lombardi back to the Flyers as his personal adviser after Lombardi was out in LA.
Hockey is a business, and much stranger things have happened before. Even so, would Lombardi even be willing to succeed Hextall under these circumstances? Just as important, from an organizational standpoint, how much would Lombardi even desire to change from Hextall's philosophies and methods? The two men are by no means clones in their managerial styles and roster-building beliefs but, over the years, have tended to be on the same page more often than not.
Given the apparent severe deterioration of the once-solid Hextall-Holmgren relationship and the abrupt timing of Hextall's dismissal, it would seem strange to replace Hextall with someone who deeply influenced him as a GM right up to hiring him as a paid adviser on top of being a friend and confidant.
That said, who knows? At the end of the day, everyone has the same goal: moving the Flyers forward from being a playoff bubble team with a deep farm system back into being a more viable threat to go deep in the playoffs without gutting the prospect pipeline in the process. Hextall and Holmgren were no longer in agreement about how that could be accomplished, and that's why there's a press conference today at the Wells Fargo Center.
Ultimately, as I stated yesterday, Ron Hextall's tenure as GM tenure could ultimately end up as being remembered as similar to the Russ Farwell years (1990-1994). The organization moved forward in terms of stockpiling picks and building through youth but the team did not see significant NHL-level improvement in their fortunes until the next regime. They also had other characteristics that were quite unrelated to each other (such as the Farwell years of the early to mid 90s being a bit too lax on player conditioning even by the era's standards whereas the Hexy era was marked by the GM being hyper-vigilant about that aspect of organizational culture to the brink of coming off as micromanaging it).
More changes are coming on the Flyers, including in player personnel. What these changes will be and when they'll come down remain to be seen. Lastly, there is more than one side to every story. Homer and David Scott will give their side today. Hextall understandably does not yet appear ready to publicly give his side, but certainly deserves the opportunity to do so if and when he is prepared to do so.
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Game 24 Preview: Flyers vs. Senators
Dave Hakstol's Philadelphia Flyers (10-11-2) are home on Tuesday to take on Guy Boucher's Ottawa Senators (9-12-3). Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7:00 p.m. ET.
The game will be televised locally on NBCSP. The radio broadcast can be found on 97.5 FM The Fanatic with an online simulcast at
FlyersRadio247.com.
This is the second three meetings between the teams this season. The season series will conclude at the Wells Fargo Center on March 11. On Oct. 10 in Ottawa, the Flyers overcame deficits of 1-0 and 2-1 as well as three Ottawa power play goals to earn a 7-4 win.
Flyers Outlook
One night after putting forth a strong all-around performance in a 4-0 home win over the New York Rangers on Black Friday the Flyers played an atrocious game in Toronto and got pummeled, 6-0. Starting goalie Cal Pickard, after posting a 30-save shutout on Friday, got strafed for four goals on six shots in the first period before he was relieved by Anthony Stolarz.
On Monday, the Flyers returned goaltender Alex Lyon (who had been day-to-day with a lower-body injury sustained in warmups in Buffalo last Wednesday) to the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms. At least until Michal Neuvirth and/or Brian Elliott are activated from IR, the Flyers will carry Pickard and Stolarz as their goaltenders.
Entering Tuesday's game, the Flyers have scored an average 2.96 goals per game (18th) and have a team 3.56 GAA (29th). The team's goaltending, penalty killing and defensive breakdowns have been widely discussed. Meanwhile, the offense has been feast-or-famine. The team he team has scored four or more goals in 10 games. But they've also been shut out four times already and held to a single goal in three other games.
The power play comes in at 15.7 percent (25th) with four shorthanded goals yielded. The NHL bottom-ranked penalty kill enters at 69.7 percent (31st). The Flyers have not yet scored a shorthanded goal.
The Flyers have only scored first in eight of 23 games thus far but are 6-1-1 in those games. They have trailed first 15 times. When yielding the game's first goal, the Flyers are 4-10-1.
Senators Outlook
The Senators are on the second half of back-to-back games. On Monday, Ottawa visited Madison Square Garden to play the New York Rangers. The Rangers prevailed, 4-2. The Senators were doing OK earlier this month but have now lost four games in a row.
From Nov. 4 to 17, the Senators went 4-2-1 over a seven-game stretch, including an upset road regulation win in Tampa Bay (on the heels of gaining a point from an overtime home loss against the Lightning less than week earlier) and back-to-back home wins against Detroit (2-1) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (6-4).
Since then, the Senators have struggled. Apart from losing three straight regulation decisions at home against the Florida Panthers and on the road against the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars, the Senators hemorrhaged a combined 19 opposing goals over those three games. The Sens also scored a combined 13 goals, and yet lost by multi-goal margins in each match. They put forth a better effort against the Rangers but still went down, 4-2.
Entering Tuesday's game, the Senators are actually the third highest-scoring team in the NHL, scoring an average 3.54 goals per game. That's the good news. The bad news is that, by far, the Senators have been the poorest defensive club in the league, with an astronomical team 4.33 goals against average. By way of comparison, even the 30th-ranked have allowed goals at an average 3.59 per game.
The Senators power play comes in ranked 9th in the NHL at 23.8 percent efficiency. The penalty kill enters at 70.1 percent, with only the Flyers ranking below.
PROJECTED LINEUPS (Subject to change)
FLYERS (Saturday's lines)
28 Claude Giroux - 14 Sean Couturier - 11 Travis Konecny
22 Dale Weise - 19 Nolan Patrick - 93 Jakub Voracek
25 James van Riemsdyk - 40 Jordan Weal - 17 Wayne Simmonds
23 Oskar Lindblom - 21 Scott Laughton- 12 Michael Raffl
9 Ivan Provorov - 8 Robert Hägg
53 Shayne Gostisbehere - 26 Christian Folin
6 Travis Sanheim - 3 Radko Gudas
41 Anthony Stolarz / 33 Cal Pickard
Scratches: 47 Andrew MacDonald (healthy), 15 Jori Lehterä (healthy), 39 Tyrell Goulbourne (healthy), 37 Brian Elliott (IR, lower body), 30 Michal Neuvirth (IR, lower body), 10 Corban Knight (IR, collarbone), 5 Sam Morin (ACL surgery).
SENATORS
10 Tom Pyatt - 95 Matt Duchene - 79 Drake Batherson
7 Brady Tkachuk - 36 Colin White - 61 Mark Stone
18 Ryan Dzingel -15 Zack Smith - 9 Bobby Ryan
89 Mikkel Boedker - 71 - Chris Tierney - 56 Magnus Pääjärvi
72 Thomas Chabot - 2 Dylan DeMelo
58 Maxime Lajoie - 83 Christian Jaros
67 Ben Harpur - 5 Cody Ceci
41 Craig Anderson / 33 Mike McKenna
Scratches: 17 Max McCormick (healthy), 74 Mark Borowiecki (upper body), 44 Jean-Gabriel Pageau (IR, achilles tendon tear).
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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