May 7, 2024 will be the 10th anniversary of the Flyers naming Ron Hextall as their general manager. He was tasked with rebuilding the team after the Paul Holmgren era went off the tracks. His attempted rebuild went wrong from just about every possible angle, and now, 10 years later, there is a new rebuilding effort undertaken by a former Flyer turned GM Danny Briere, and it has left a growing divide across the masses as to what it is a rebuild is supposed to be accomplishing.
Hextall was very good at selling his plan, but not actually deploying the strategy in real time. He just loaded up on mid-round picks and one by one came to the conclusion that none of them were good enough to build the team around. After a few seasons, the fans came to the realization that there wasn’t a light at the end of the tunnel and the tide turned and ultimately led to Hextall’s dismissal.
The 2017-18 season ended up being his last as GM, and it was a mirage of epic proportions. The team played very well, with Sean Couturier having his breakout season, Shayne Gostisbehere hit career highs, Claude Giroux broke the 100-point plateau for the first and only time in his career, and second overall pick Nolan Patrick debuted. It seemed like the franchise was on top of the world.
The most interesting part of the 2017-18 season was the playoffs. The Flyers claimed the third seed in the Metro, just one point above both wild card spots. They then got fed their lunch by the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games where they were outscored 28 to 13, including getting shut out in games one and four.
Instead of seeing the potential of the roster and look to make forward progress, Ron Hextall primarily sat in his hands and ran the nucleus of the team back pretty much in its entirety, including the disastrous Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth tandem.
They did add free agent James Van Riemsdyk, the lone even semi-notable outside addition during Hextall’s entire tenure, which ended up just being a lasting middle finger long after he was gone.
The goalie tandem of Elliott and Neuvirth didn’t survive the preseason and the organization ended up burning through eight different goalies that season, ultimately leading Carter Hart to the NHL early. Nobody on the roster really took any steps forward and the losses mounted, resulting in GM Ron Hextall getting fired on November 26, 23 games into the season and head coach Dave Hakstol followed shortly thereafter on December 17.
The moral of that story was the Flyers rested on their laurels, focused on the dim positives instead of the otherwise alarming concerns and it set the team up for failure and cost everyone their jobs.
And that’s the tie that feels very similar to today.
The 2023-24 Flyers are exceeding the rather low expectations they entered the season with and have managed to hang around the playoff scene now well into December. While it’s a pleasant surprise to be better than expected, the “rebuilding” Flyers are winning games, they’re doing so utilizing the least amount of rookies possible and between cap problems and Tortorella’s leadership, the chance they franchise walks into the 2024 offseason looking to capitalize on their season with much needed additions is highly unlikely, setting them up for major disappointment and stalled progress in 2024-25.
Keeping the roster at a bubble-level, refusing to add outside talent to improve (or potentially adding the wrong one as an olive branch make-good stunt for the fans), and just hoping and praying that one of their prospects shows up and single-handedly saves the franchise is essentially what Hextall’s “rebuild” boiled down to, and it sure fells like the essence the Briere regime is looking to replicate.
The endgame of Michkov showing up and putting the weight of the franchise on his back is great. It’s a fairytale ending fans have been hoping for with every draft class that’s gone by for a decade. And given his talent level, he could very well be the guy to do it.
John Tortorella thinks so to… kinda.
“You get to the future, you start moving away a couple of years from now when the Mad Russian comes over here & you start bringing in maybe some UFAs when the time’s right w/some more offensive skill. I want that to fall into place when they come in. I want to stay w/this style.” -Tortorella
First and foremost, “start bringing in maybe some UFAs when the time is right” is an objectively hilarious statement. He couldn’t have worded that in a more noncommittal way.
Torts basically indicates that Michkov’s arrival triggers the start of “go time” showing that at least the front office has enough brain power to figure out that they should indeed be building around their young superstar.
The problem is Michkov’s not expected in North America until the 2026-27 season. That’s two and a half years from now. Is the franchise just planning on treading water until he shows up? Will the roster continue to bust their asses if their hard work isn’t reciprocated by their front office in the form of upgrades? Over 200 more games is a long time to keep up their fighting spirit, especially when it’s an uphill battle.
Running it back with a playoff bubble team and not considering any avenue of improvement is just setting them up for failure. Even if the players don’t mutiny against Torts, it keeps the ceiling of the team rather low. It mirrors what Tortorella helped create in Columbus, a hard working, talent deprived team who exists as a thorn in the side of better, legitimate playoff teams and won’t make much noise if they manage to sneak into the postseason at all.
The front office faces have changed. The names of the players have changed. Even the on-ice effort level has changed. But the one thing that has stayed the same between the Hextall regime and the Brier-era is the fact that the organization doesn’t seem to have a clear path forward. They’re hurting their own draft positioning with their wins and refusal to part ways with their most valuable assets, but yet there’s practically zero chance the organization looks for legitimate reinforcements from outside in the form of free agents or trades.
“Those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” as the old saying goes. The Flyers grinding out a few unforeseen wins after some of the worst seasons in franchise history can feel like a positive. And, if the right steps are taken, can actually be. Now, it’ll be up to the new front office to pivot from their rebuilding stance to step up and take those steps forward. Will the Philadelphia Flyers actually make progress to becoming a top team? Or is this another hallucination of advancement that the front office will snuff out by their indolence?
It’ll be up to Briere… or maybe the puppet master John Tortorella to decide.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: inquirer.com
brotherlypuck.com 