As Danny Briere completes his second draft and free agency at the helm of the Philadelphia Flyers, the greener pastures we were all hoping for after that wretched colostomy bag Chuck Fletcher got fired haven’t really come along as expected.
Instead of forward progress under a proper rebuild with a light at the end of the tunnel, there’s been stalling, questionable drafting and the organization on the whole no closer to glory days than they were over the last 10 years. In a way, the running in place feels just like it did during on Hextall’s days as GM.
So just how similar are the parallels between Hextall and Briere?
No Progress / Punting to Next Year
Ron Hextall: Hextall inherited a team struggling financially, but still had quite a few high-end pieces to either build around or sell for assets. Hextall chose to do neither. He didn’t make a top-six outside addition until James Van Riemsdyk in 2018, four years after he was promoted to GM and way too little too late to make a difference. The organization lived exclusively to draft, and the other 51 weeks of the year didn’t mean anything.
Danny Briere: The move… or lack thereof, that launched the Briere/Hextall comparisons in the first place was the fact that the 2024 offseason came and went and the Flyers did quite literally nothing. The “rebuilding” team didn’t sell. They didn’t add young roster players or picks (other than a baffling swap from 32nd this season with Edmonton’s first in 2025). What awaits in 2025 they’re hellbent on standing pat for? Hey… don’t ask those kinds of questions.
Comparison: The main roster didn’t change much during the Hextall era, but at least he typically made at least one decent trade that fell under the “rebuild” gimmick that made people continue to buy in, but Briere’s front office punted the entirety of their responsibilities to the 2025 offseason. They ran back a virtually identical roster expecting vastly different results (in any direction) in the textbook definition of insanity. What are the odds Briere turns into Rambo in 2025 and overturns 60% of the roster or does something spectacular at the draft? Well, after a summer like 2024, it’s hard to believe he’s got that kind of skill in him.
Not Selling Roster Players
Ron Hextall: This may arguably be the most damning part of Hextall’s rebuild, as he kept Claude Giroux, Wayne Simmonds and Jake Voracek at the peaks of their respective careers. Not only did he pass up on the king’s ransom of picks, prospects and assets that would’ve come along with trading them, but because they helped the Flyers win games, they often sabotaged their own placement in the draft. Before trades and lotteries, the Flyers were slated to pick 7th, 18th, 13th, and 19th during Hextall’s tenure, unacceptable positions to start a rebuild from.
Danny Briere: Lack of main roster movement is a fork in the road for Briere as well, as he has signed some questionable main roster extensions and is currently in the middle of whether or not Travis Konecny, their best trade chip, gets an extension. Keeping dudes like Nick Seeler, Scott Laughton, Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway forever is a major problem, compacted by lifetime contracts already existing to players like Sean Couturier, Travis Sanheim and Owen Tippett. The franchise clearly didn’t learn a thing from past mistakes.
Comparison: Any smart rebuilding team would’ve dealt players at their peaks for picks and prospects to fast track a rebuild. It’s quite literally the best way to jump start a rebuild in the first place. The Flyers, on the other hand, aren’t a smart rebuilding. It’s their theoretical “rebuilding on the fly” but in reality, all it’s doing is tying their hands when it comes to their ability to make trades and additions because they’ve got so much cap already committed to the team for years to come, and they’re not adding nearly enough draft assets to properly build the future anyway.
Focus on Depth
Ron Hextall: Who among us still doesn’t wake up with nightmares about Andrew MacDonald or Chris Vandevelde? What about Brandon Manning, or RJ Umberger, or Nick Schultz, or Dale Weise or Val Filppula? The revolving door of overplayed fourth liners was one of the aspects folks probably remember vividly from the Hextall era.
Danny Briere: Somehow two offseasons into his tenure, Briere has not addressed the top six in any fashion whatsoever. They have, however, found the time and money to commit to Garnet Hathaway, Nick Seeler, Ryan Poehling, Erik Johnson and Marc Staal. Why? Well they’re culture guys and culture > winning apparently.
Comparison: Are the Briere-era depth players slightly better and overall more useful than Hextall’s? Sure, for whatever that’s worth. But the focus on the wrong end of the lineup remains a prevalent issue. At least Hextall had a few good players in the top six to hold down the fort. The current roster is barren of legit top six talent, or at least missing a few stars to glue the pieces together in a cohesive way.
Big-Brain Drafting
Ron Hextall: Jay O’Brien, German Rubstov, Nolan Patrick, Pascal Laberge. The list of early-round busts and late round duds is staggering during the Ron Hextall/Chris Pryor years. Hexy didn’t have selection beyond the second round make it big. Noah Cates (5th round 2017) and Sam Ersson (5th round 2018) are the only two candidates left. His regime was clearly a big believer in quantity over quality which did not pay off and is a massive reason why the Flyers are still stuck in the same mud a decade later.
Danny Briere: Brent Flahr’s drafting has been one of the brighter spots in the organization since the Fletcher years, with the 2024 class being the first under the microscope as potentially problematic. It just so happened to run concurrent with the team having a piss poor rest of the offseason that enhanced the questionable nature of their selections.
Jett Luchanko over Zeev Buium and Konsta Helenius will be a fascinating story to watch unfold, and their later round decisions, being choosing big oafs with low ceilings instead of their typical smaller boom-or-bust players, is anyone’s guess. They probably saw it as a weakness in the pipeline and though this weaker class would be the time to course correct, but it probably wasn’t the best strategy to sew hope at this juncture.
Comparison: At the time of a draft, analyzing of the picks can be spun in any direction a pundit wants. In reality, it takes years to feel the ramifications of any particular class and most selections won’t even make it anyway. Development on the whole has never been a strong suit of the Flyers no matter who’s in charge, which may be the larger issue the Flyers face during their renewed “rebuilding” efforts.
Conclusion
When people think of Ron Hextall, most probably remember the fact that he didn’t allow chicken wings or pizza in the locker rooms and the disaster of the Nolan Patrick pick. But really, he failed at drafting all around, never did anything to shakeup the main roster until he dealt Brayden Schenn three years into his tenure (a move that still hurts the Flyers today) and the overall lack of proactivity set the team up to fail years before he was fired.
The Flyers organization selling a bill of goods, doing very little to achieve those goals, but doing just enough to keep fans interested has become the norm for the once proud franchise. Danny Briere should be thanking his lucky stars Matvei Michkov arrived two years ahead of schedule, because that is the only thing keeping the tensions of the masses under wraps for the time being, because otherwise, he would’ve been quite literally empty handed during the entirety of the 2024 offseason.
There’s been a new battle cry from both the team and the fans, which is essentially “rebuilding means whatever you want it to mean.” Basically, it’s a cover for the team not taking the classic teardown and build up approach and justifying any anti-rebuild choice they make along the way.
A rebuild on the fly can be possible, but it requires a level of proactivity, skill, killer instinct and decision making that the Flyers have not shown in decades. No mater how many times Briere hints to 2025, he did nothing to lay a foundation for belief that he’s got the managerial skills to actually overhaul the team in any meaningful way.
At the end of the day, there’s a big difference between “rebuilding” and just bobbing along in the ocean as a bubble team. At face value, the Flyers seem to be content as the latter. Rebuilding typically means crafting and developing the product towards an end goal. Not just a cheap marketing term or rally cry with no actual action.
When Danny Briere took over, it momentarily felt as though the Flyers would finally figure their situation out and build for a brighter future. But in reality they’ve continued to leave the train in neutral long after it careened off a cliff. The “New Era of Orange” the franchise has been pushing is really starting to feel like the same old shit, and much like Ron Hextall’s atrocities, it seems like most people won’t catch on until it’s too late.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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