Hextall: Snider, Homer On Board With My Vision From Day One
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- For the first time in, maybe ever, the Flyers are not in win-now mode.
Six-points out of the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, the Flyers went against their conventional approach, and decided to sell at the trade deadline---the franchise's first trade deadline under new GM Ron Hextall.
Hextall says owner Ed Snider and President Paul Holmgren are on board.
"The biggest thing that I talked about was there was a vision here that I wanted to follow through with," Hextall told Angelo Cataldi and the 94WIP Morning Show on Tuesday. "I gotta be frank with you, everyone makes a big deal out of it, they were on board right from the start and they haven't wavered. They're good with it, they're on the same page."
Listen: Ron Hextall on the 94WIP Morning Show
Before joining the Flyers' front-office, Hextall was the assistant general manager for the Los Angeles Kings, a city that isn't quite the same as Philly.
"Sometimes when you leave an organization and you see how another organization operates---I mean LA was totally different where Philly the Flyer fans are kind of hockey crazed," Hextall said. "In LA, you can walk around down there---the players can---and no one really knows who you are. It's just a different atmosphere and then you see the way another organization runs."
Hextall joined the Kings in 2006 and helped completely rebuild the franchise, culminating in a 2012 Stanley Cup Championship.
"I think the biggest thing I learned out there was, when we went there we pretty much blew everything up," Hextall explained. "The staff, the coaches, the trainers, the scouts, our office staff. Everything was turned over, our strength and the conditioning coach. You really learn a lot in the hiring part of the business, which really is a huge part of a general manager's business.
"I think the other part, in Philly the last 30 years, its been such a successful franchise. Every year there was a tweak here or a tweak there, and you always had a chance of winning the Cup, other than probably a couple of years. You go to LA and we didn't have a very good team, and we weren't a young team, and we pretty much had to re-tool the whole team."
The Flyers, conversely, are in a different position than the '06 LA Kings. They're much closer, Hextall explained.
"Homer has left a lot of great pieces in place here," Hextaill said. "You look at all of our forwards, our young forwards still with upside. He did a good job here and again, left a lot of the core pieces here to build around, so I can't say enough about him.
"We've got some work to do, but we still believe we're a good hockey team and we believe we can make the playoffs."