Hextall accomplished what no other Flyer GM has done since the 80s

[RonJeremy]

Hextall has actually drafted and developed two very good goaltenders and held actually held on to them and not foolishly traded them away. The last time we had a good one two punch was Lindbergh and Frose in 85. He also drafted and developed several very good defenseman like Provy, Sanheim and Meyers. Throughout the Flyers history we were not very good at drafting defenseman and always had to make trades,  Howe, Desjardins , Timonen, Pronger, etc.

 

If Hextall would have only realized that his coach was horrendous and fired him sooner he would still have a job. I dont know how he didnt realize our team,  although a work in progress ,was vastly better than their record showed. They were just not responding to the coach.

 

Hextall fixed a decades long problem of crappy goaltending and the inability to draft quality defenseman and he did it pretty quickly. So he really deserves alot of credit. If Frost, Farabee and Ratcliffe live up to their potential we have the makings of a very good team in the next couple of years. 

[intheslot]

 From cap hell to stairway to Cap sunshine.......

all them picks also .......

[OccamsRazor]

This is old news do we really need a new thread for this?

 

Really?

[RonJeremy]

Well, considering there wasnt much other news going on I figured I'd put it out there. At least it wasnt fake news or really fake news.

[FD19372]

One has to really question if Ed Snider would have allowed Hextall to get as far as he did in acquiring draft picks.

[King Knut]

3 hours ago, RonJeremy said:

Hextall has actually drafted and developed two very good goaltenders and held actually held on to them and not foolishly traded them away. The last time we had a good one two punch was Lindbergh and Frose in 85. He also drafted and developed several very good defenseman like Provy, Sanheim and Meyers. Throughout the Flyers history we were not very good at drafting defenseman and always had to make trades,  Howe, Desjardins , Timonen, Pronger, etc.

 

If Hextall would have only realized that his coach was horrendous and fired him sooner he would still have a job. I dont know how he didnt realize our team,  although a work in progress ,was vastly better than their record showed. They were just not responding to the coach.

 

Hextall fixed a decades long problem of crappy goaltending and the inability to draft quality defenseman and he did it pretty quickly. So he really deserves alot of credit. If Frost, Farabee and Ratcliffe live up to their potential we have the makings of a very good team in the next couple of years. 

 

Thanks for saying this.  I've been preaching this a lot and getting a lot of blowback because of... well it seems pretty much him signing Weise and not being able to trade Lehtera or something.  I don't really get it.

 

The fact is I don't really need or Hextall to get his due credit (he did save this organization from a much longer more horrible nightmare, but that's not my issue).  I really think it's important for us to recognize the actual problems that needed to be fixed so that we can actually notice when they get fixed and when they're still broken.

 

Fact of the matter is that hextall could have brought in Carter Hart, McDavid, Karlsson and a bunch of other all stars under the cap on great deals and under Hakstol, I'm not sure it would have made a lick of difference.  

 

Hakstol was a very very serious problem and as I have been suggesting for a couple of years now, easily this team's BIGGEST problem and perhaps even it's only SEVERE problem.

 

yes they had a lot of young guys and kids that needed to develop a little bit, but this team may have competed LAST YEAR were it not for Hakstol... and goalie injuries.  

 

Speaking of which: Hextall takes crap for the goalie situation too... but most of us were paying attention all along, and it just seems many of us choose to forget that it was complicated going as far back as prepping for the Vegas draft year (they HAD to sign Mason or Neuvy and Neuvy wanted less money over fewer years and had a better chance of being drafted by Vegas, so Hextall signed him). 

 

HOWEVER Hextall did NOTHING when Hakstol played every goalie he was given into the ground until they were all hurt.

 

Previous to Hakstol screwing with the goalies, Hextall sided with moron Berube and let the best goalie coach they'd had in a generation walk because Berube refused to listen to reason about an injured goalie saying he wasn't ready to return.

 

THAT WAS A DUMB MOVE BY HEXTALL.  

 

Hextall also takes crap for not putting the "kids" on the team, but TK, Provo, & Patty all started as teenagers Lindblom made the team a few weeks after his 21st birthday, He put Sanheim on the team at 21 (first year out of Juniors) (Hakstol just refused to dress him), and also gave Vrobyov a shot at 21 (most accept that it didn't work out).  

 

HOWEVER Hextall did nothing when Hakstol refused to use each of them in the rolls that suited them (or in fact at all -he'd frequently bench them).

 

Hextall takes crap for Weise, Lehtera and Weal (Weise got a fair contract for the player that he was in Montreal, he just wasn't that player here, Lehtera is here in order to get Frost and Farabee... that's it, if that deal could have happened for just Schenn, it would have, and Weal earned his two years with a great spring run his contract year... in fact, many in the organiation (notably phantoms asst. coach Riley Cote) were complaining publicly that Weal wasn't brought up to the NHL sooner for purely political reasons.

 

HOWEVER Hextall however DID NOTHING when Hakstol continued to utilize these players in key rolls despite them showing they could not cut it as he was trying to use them.  

 

If we're going to complain about Hextall, it's important to ID what he actually did wrong.  His hands were tied by Homer's cap situation so he couldn't really bring in better players until this summer and he did.  

 

HOWEVER He SHOULD have signed Grabner, but 30 other teams didn't think to either.  

 

Could he have signed another goalie?  IMHO he could not have signed one better than Elliott two years ago, and I believe all the available goalies records have borne that out.  There were others that had never started he could have taken flyers on, but I'm pretty sure that would have failed too.  I don't blame Hextall on the goalie thing.  I also don't blame him for not bringing up Hart sooner.  I don't think any GM in the league not completely desperate would have brought him up and even though it wasn't Hextall's reasoning, I can only thank god that Fletcher fired Hakstol before bringing him up.  I really don't think we'd be talking about Hart as much of anything other than a kid with potential if Hakstol was still coaching this team.

 

Fact is, Hextall's blindness with Hakstol is enough to condemn and criticize him.  More than enough.  If Hextall refused to fire Hakstol, then he should have been fired, but it doesn't seem like that's the way it played out.  It really seems to have been over something else.

 

The fact that Hakstol apparently wasn't the reason he got fired makes me very concerned about the direction Homer and Scott want this team to go in and how the expect to get there.

 

My only hope is that Fletcher isn't as stupid as they are.  So far he's getting a lot of credit for unloading guys that were headed out at the end of the year anyway or simply should have been pine riding in the press box (and in fact were under Gordon) and getting next to nothing in return.  

 

He gets credit for bringing up Hart, but fact is, he pretty much had no choice.  Everyone else was hurt.

 

If Hakstol was still the coach and he needed to trade these guys to get them out of the lineup, then these would be good moves.  As it is, under Gordon, they have all been roster moves to make room for no one who's actually playing yet.  

 

My guess is that he's still getting roster ducks in a row for his deadline deals.  At that point, there will be more to talk about.  

 

Long story short, Hextall did so many things right and changed the direction of this team for the better in ways no one's giving him credit for... BUT that said, if firing him was the only way to get rid of Hakstol (who was Hextall's most egregious and disturbingly committed mistake) then I am THRILLED to pieces they are both gone.

 

I think it could have been handled better and I think that may come back to haunt Homer and Scott someday, and may already have done so, but nevertheless, we actually CAN move forward now with all the skill that this team has amassed.  Who knows what Fletch will be able to pull off from here.  

 

[RonJeremy]

I guarantee you that when Hart was called up and inspired the team with his solid play, if Hakstol was still coach ,we would never have gone on the streak we have been on and all the players who woke up ,would still be sleepwalking on the ice.