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Hakstol should be here for long haul with Flyers

On the day he hired Dave Hakstol as the Flyers' head coach, Ron Hextall told a brief story about this, his first big decision as a general manager. Hakstol had coached Hextall's son Brett at the University of North Dakota, but a helicopter-style view from the stands didn't provide Hextall with enough detail and perspective to know whether Hakstol was ready to jump from college hockey to maybe the most demanding NHL market in America.

On the day he hired Dave Hakstol as the Flyers' head coach, Ron Hextall told a brief story about this, his first big decision as a general manager. Hakstol had coached Hextall's son Brett at the University of North Dakota, but a helicopter-style view from the stands didn't provide Hextall with enough detail and perspective to know whether Hakstol was ready to jump from college hockey to maybe the most demanding NHL market in the United States.

Over four days, Hextall and Hakstol met in person, talked on the phone, traded questions and answers until Hextall was satisfied with a coaching choice unlike any in a generation for the franchise.

Every couple of years, whenever the Flyers fired or demoted a head coach and hired or promoted a successor, the transition came with an implicit (and sometimes explicit) demand: Win right away and keep winning, or we'll find someone else. But Hextall was altering the dynamic and ending that tradition for the Flyers' greater long-term good. There were young players already on the roster and prospects on the way, and Hextall wanted Hakstol to assimilate them into the lineup, to shepherd them into their primes, to grow and develop as a coach himself. This time, with this hire, there was less a demand than an understanding: You will have time.

"In the end," Hextall said, "do you believe in the guy or do you not?"

The last two seasons have demonstrated just how deep Hextall's belief in Hakstol ran then and runs now. The Flyers have been exactly the team they could have been reasonably expected to be: a by-the-skin-of-their-false-teeth playoff team that was quickly dispatched by a superior opponent last season; a team that, to reach the postseason again, needed to be sprinkled with Lourdesian baptismal waters ahead of Tuesday's game against Ottawa. Once the math catches up to the Flyers and they are officially no longer eligible for the playoffs - they entered Tuesday with a 0.2 percent chance of earning a spot - the players themselves will express disappointment and lament opportunities missed. The coaches and front office will, too, and many of the team's fans and followers, having been conditioned to do so over time, will wonder about Hakstol's future.

They shouldn't. Hextall has shown no indication that he's considering replacing Hakstol, and he shouldn't replace him. This isn't the team that Hakstol was hired to coach, and firing him would be a betrayal of that patient rebuilding plan to which Hextall has said he would abide and an abdication of his responsibility and mission.

That Hextall has said he would continue to be patient doesn't mean that he will or should stand pat this offseason when it comes to making changes to the Flyers' roster. He has had nearly four years - three as GM, one as Paul Holmgren's understudy - to observe the team's core and draw conclusions about Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn, Sean Couturier: the players they were, the players they are, the players they're going to be.

In previous eras, three years would have been an eternity for such self-evaluation from the Flyers. They already would have made major trades and signings, and Hakstol would be coaching under a microscope every day, the pressure mounting on him to win a Stanley Cup after the front office had spent a summer sparing no expense.

Hextall, though, has been relatively cautious, waiting to see if this particular group improved organically. "We started the season pretty much the same team as last year," Giroux said, and here they are. So now is the time to begin making those more-significant changes, the strategic trades, the matriculation of those prospects, and now is the time to start to see what Hakstol can do with a better, more promising roster.

He has taken heat this season for his handling of Shayne Gostisbehere, for benching him and rookie Travis Konecny. But neither of them appears to have been irrevocably damaged by the whole thing, and along the way, Ivan Provorov has become the team's top defenseman and Jordan Weal a possible low-cost provider of speed and scoring depth.

"I think all of our young guys have shown that progress," Hakstol said Tuesday. "They're all in a little bit different role. Jordan Weal's in his role, in a top-six type of role. With TK, he's bounced around our lineup a bit, but unbeknownst maybe to the obvious eye, he's played an important role for us. . . . He goes out, and we have the ability to put him in different spots. I like the job he's doing. Provy, we probably don't need to talk too much about him. We've talked about him a lot."

This was the goal all along for Hextall, from the moment in May 2015 that he introduced the most unconventional coaching hire in Flyers history: The coach and those young players would grow together and get everyone talking about them. It isn't happening tomorrow for the Flyers and Hakstol, and no one should have expected it to, Hextall least of all. He will give Dave Hakstol more time because he believes in him, and because he owes it to him.

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski