The Philadelphia Flyers are rarely a franchise with an eye beyond the present. Throughout the team’s 57-year history, the Flyers have been known as one of the league’s most aggressive and competitive teams. Their .568 points percentage is the fourth-best in NHL history. Only the Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins have more wins since the Flyers entered the league in 1967-68 in the regular season and the playoffs. The team has only had two stretches where they have missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons.
Yet, two of the team’s last three general managers (GMs) have focused on the future. When the Flyers hired current general manager Daniel Brière in early 2023, he immediately said the team would be entering a rebuild, something that hadn’t really happened before in team history.
“We might need a little bit of patience from the fans in that regard,” Brière said at the end of the 2022-23 regular season. “It might be some growing pains to go through, but when you look at how some of our young players got better this year, I think that was really impressive. And exciting for the future.”
While Ron Hextall didn’t commit to as drastic of an approach when he took up the mantle in 2014, it was quickly clear his style was different from the all-in strategy that defined his predecessor Paul Holmgren, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Hextall immediately focused on clearing the team’s salary cap situation and accumulating young talent, just like Brière has.
Hextall’s approach ultimately didn’t work out. The Flyers didn’t win a playoff series in his four-plus years running the team. While he set the foundation for the team’s excellent 2019-20 season and some of his draft picks remain, his tenure left much to be desired. Brière’s, meanwhile, is just getting started. So, let’s compare how the two handled their first 16 months or so on the job and see if there’s anything Brière can learn from Hextall’s successes and failures.
The Start of the Hextall Era
It’s scary how similar the two GMs approached the early part of their tenures. Let’s look at Hextall first. As mentioned above, his early objectives centered around clearing cap space and acquiring prospects. His first big move fit into the former category, as he traded franchise icon Scott Hartnell to the Columbus Blue Jackets for former Flyer R.J. Umberger and a fourth-round pick. It was a bad trade from a production standpoint, but Umberger’s contract expired one year before Hartnell’s, slightly expediting the oncoming cap space. Given both players wound up being bought out, it’s not like Columbus made out like bandits, either.
Hextall took Travis Sanheim 17th overall with his first draft pick, a better or at least comparable pick than anyone in that range other than David Pastrnak. His first free agency was about finding depth, and two of his signings (Nick Schultz and Michael Del Zotto) fit so well that they returned on two-year deals. The Flyers were hanging around the playoff bubble at the trade deadline, but Hextall stuck to his plan. He moved veteran defensemen Braydon Coburn and Kimmo Timonen to the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks, respectively. Both players brought back a nice haul — first and third-round picks plus Radko Gudas for Coburn, a second and a conditional fourth that became another second for Timonen.
Another cap-clearing trade came in the offseason when Hextall offloaded Nicklas Grossmann and the dead contract of Chris Pronger on the Arizona Coyotes, with Sam Gagner and another draft pick coming back. The 2015 Draft looked is arguably Hextall’s crowning jewel. Ivan Provorov never turned into a star but consistently played big minutes and had some strong offensive seasons early in his career. Additionally, Hextall used that extra first from the Coburn trade to move up and nab Travis Konecny at 24th overall; he has blossomed into a true top-line player.
Though he wouldn’t make any major additions in the 2015 offseason (although Michal Neuvirth had his moments in a tandem role), Hextall did make his first significant signing that June. He inked Jakub Voracek to an eight-year, $66 million contract after a breakout season that saw him finish fifth in the league in scoring.
The Start of the Brière Era
Brière also got the ball rolling by clearing salary. Ironically, his first major move was trading away one the most-coveted players Hextall acquired in Provorov. He was no longer a fit in Philadelphia, and Brière worked hard to extract maximum value, even looping in the Los Angeles Kings to make it a three-team move, with Provorov going to Columbus. When the dust settled, the Flyers accumulated a first-round pick, two second-rounders, prospect Helge Grans and two players added by the Kings to clear cap space on their end in Sean Walker and Cal Petersen.
The timelines change slightly here, as Brière traded Kevin Hayes shortly thereafter in a move that’s more comparable in the Hextall timeline to the Grossman/Pronger deal. The Flyers did retain salary and only acquired a sixth-round pick, but head coach John Tortorella basically couldn’t work with Hayes, rendering a move inevitable. Brière’s home run draft looks more likely to be his first rather than his second, reversing course from Hextall. In 2023, Brière opportunistically selected Matvei Michkov at seventh overall, and his second first-round pick (defenseman Oliver Bonk, selected 22nd) is on the rise as well.
Like Hextall, Brière’s first free agency was centered around cheap depth moves. Brière also signed two of his additions to two-year extensions, re-upping Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway after effective seasons in the bottom six (with Poehling routinely playing higher in the lineup). Brière too prioritized his plan over a playoff spot, as the Flyers sold high on Walker to add another first-round pick to their cupboard.
Oh, and Brière’s first significant signing was also an eight-year deal to a ginger right-winger. His went to Owen Tippett, who had emerged as a reliable 25-goal, 50-point player in his first two full seasons in Philadelphia with the chance to be something more. We arrive at the present day after a 2024 Draft that didn’t generate much buzz and a quiet free agency that didn’t see the Flyers add anyone noteworthy.
Where Do Things Go From Here?
Remember, Hextall was largely revered for his early work. His tenure is a cautionary tale as to the escalating difficulty level of a rebuild or retool. Tearing things down is the easy part — building a contender is much more daunting.
Hextall was undone by poor drafting and too much patience. The 2016 Draft was an abject disaster, headlined by first-round pick German Rubtsov playing only four NHL games. Some of that is due to factors beyond talent evaluation. Pascal Laberge had his career undone by a devastating cheap shot. Carter Hart’s career came to a screeching halt when he was among the five members of the 2018 Canadian World Junior team charged with sexual assault.
Injuries also derailed the trajectory of 2017 second-overall pick Nolan Patrick, one of the most agonizing “what ifs?” in recent Flyers history. He batted .500 in the first round in 2018 — Joel Farabee was a success at 14th overall but Jay O’Brien busted at 18th. However, Hextall consistently struggled to unearth talent beyond the first round. Again, bad luck played a role, as Oskar Lindblom was thriving up until a December 2019 cancer diagnosis. His best pick beyond round one was probably Noah Cates, although maybe the team’s current goalie tandem of Samuel Ersson and Ivan Fedotov can change that.
However, once the cap dumping concluded with the trade of Vincent Lecavalier and Luke Schenn to the Kings in January, 2016, Hextall got gun-shy. His only two significant transactions were trading Brayden Schenn for two first-round picks in 2017 (taking on Jori Lehterä’s contract to do so) and a five-year, $35 million contract to bring James van Riemsdyk back to Philly in 2018. The “JVR” deal was the only free agent Hextall ever signed to a contract worth at least $10 million in total.
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Brière’s drafting acumen will be put on trial next year. Barring future trades, the Flyers will tie their franchise record for most picks in one first round (three), which they did back in 1978. He was reportedly looking to make another splash this offseason that never came to pass, so his aggressiveness isn’t gone. But there’s a lot of work to do for the Flyers to return to the heights they reached when Hextall and Brière were playing for them rather than pulling the strings.