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In firing Berube, Hextall broke from Flyers history

On the days, separated by seven months, that they promoted Craig Berube to head coach and Ron Hextall to general manager, the Flyers framed each announcement in the manner in which they conduct so much of their daily business - with a reverence for their past that bordered on the pathological.

Flyers general manager Ron Hextall says he is on the same page as chairman Ed Snider. (David Swanson / Staff Photographer)
Flyers general manager Ron Hextall says he is on the same page as chairman Ed Snider. (David Swanson / Staff Photographer)Read more(David Swanson/Staff Photographer)

On the days, separated by seven months, that they promoted Craig Berube to head coach and Ron Hextall to general manager, the Flyers framed each announcement in the manner in which they conduct so much of their daily business - with a reverence for their past that bordered on the pathological.

Berube and Hextall had been teammates with the Flyers a generation earlier, and both had worked for the organization after their playing careers had ended. Ed Snider, the Flyers' team chairman, and Paul Holmgren, the team's president, flanked Berube at the first news conference and Hextall at the second, and the stories and anecdotes from the old days flowed like foamy Molson from a just-tapped keg. That was the nostalgic veneer and implicit message of each image: that Chief and Hexy were Flyers once and Flyers forever, and they would stay true to the organization's core principles and practices.

But when it came to the essence of each man's goals in his new role, Hextall offered the promise of a genuine break from a history that has seen the Flyers fail to win a Stanley Cup in 40 years. Berube preached a return to disciplined hockey and defensive accountability, two cliches any coach can spout, but Hextall was the one who noted the paucity of Flyers draft picks playing for the franchise's AHL affiliate, the positive influence that analytics were having on the sport, the need for the Flyers to stop doing the same things they'd always done.

That is the temptation, after all, in the wake of Hextall's decision Friday to fire Berube: Here go the Flyers again, changing head coaches and hoping it fixes everything. It's an easy criticism for a franchise that's gone through 10 head coaches in 20 years. Most of the time, that criticism has been justifiable, because the cycle of hiring and replacing head coaches was a function of the Flyers' infamous impatience, their unwillingness to let a particular group of players marinate in a particular coach's philosophy for more than what seemed a few months.

This transition is different, though, or at least it has the potential to be, so long as Hextall follows through on his own rhetoric. No one who listened to Hextall on Wednesday, during a news conference at the Flyers' practice facility in Voorhees, should be surprised that he called Berube on Friday with bad news. The subtle signs had been there throughout his remarks.

Those seven years that Hextall spent as an executive with the Los Angeles Kings, when they went from feeding at the bottom of the NHL to carrying the Stanley Cup in 2012 and (after he returned to Philly) in 2014, left a mark on him. From the moment he became the Flyers GM, Hextall has accented his desire to rebuild them from within, to break the pattern of sacrificing still-maturing players and prospects for veterans who might fill a more immediate need. To that end, his impassioned defense of Sean Couturier and Brayden Schenn, his plea for patience as they and Wayne Simmonds continued to develop, and his emphatic assertion that the team would not buy out Vinny Lecavalier's contract were revealing.

It was clear Wednesday that Hextall doesn't want to move Couturier, Schenn, or Simmonds, and that he doesn't believe he can move Lecavalier, so he needed a head coach who would extract the best of whatever each of those players has or has left. The Flyers had a lot of shortcomings this season for which Berube couldn't be blamed, from a slow, skittish group of defensemen to a lack of depth among the forwards. But his inability to coax more production out of Lecavalier and to help Couturier and Schenn make tangible advances in their games cost him dearly with a GM who doesn't appear of a mind to revamp the roster and, because of the Flyers' previous mismanagement of the salary cap, probably couldn't if he wanted to.

"We're not going to mortgage our future, but that doesn't mean we're not a playoff team and we're not going to try to make the playoffs," Hextall said. "They're really two different things. . . . We'll move forward and do anything we can do to try [to] become a better team this summer. Part of becoming a better team is making our players better."

Put simply, Hextall looked at the Flyers and decided that, even if they didn't have enough to be an elite team, there was more to them than a 33-31-18 record and a late-March elimination from playoff contention, and he wasn't certain Berube would ever get more from those players who might yet be the core of a championship team. Hextall's task and test now are to find a coach who will, and for reasons of perception and substance, he would do well to settle on a candidate with no previous ties to the Flyers, someone for whom a fresh approach would be natural. The Flyers could frame the hire however they chose, but everyone would know the truth: Ron Hextall promised to be different, and damn if he didn't dare to follow through on that promise.

@MikeSielski