Penguins / Flyers is a heated rivalry over the years, and the Hextall family has a special place in it. Bryan Hextall played for the Penguins from 1969-73. Her son Ron spent years of training in Pittsburgh idolizing Pens goalkeeper Jimmy Rutherford.
Go forward 45 or 50 years and Ron wrote his own chapters of the NHL tradition and the Pittsburgh / Philadelphia rivalry, and also became the first person to be the general manager of both the Penguins and the Flyers.
Since Hextall’s first major administrative stint in Philadelphia ended just over two years ago, what better resource than our own Broad Street Hockey Steph to get a little insight into the Flyer’s perspective on what happened … And maybe what we can expect to move on.
Q: For a quick overview, how would you describe Ron Hextall as a manager?
Well, he’s a good GM. Not great, but good. His ability to assess NHL-level talent leaves much to be desired, but he is a good copywriter and will help build an organization from scratch.
Q: What do you think were some of the best moves that Hextall has made for the Flyers over the years?
All of these moves are probably related to the draft – the best thing he did, as far as I’m concerned, was to stock up on enough picks to be able to negotiate and draft with Travis Konecny. Also being able to exchange Zac Rinaldo for a draft choice from the third round was just magical.
Q: On the other hand, what moves do you think he made that didn’t work as planned?
There is much more to this answer than the previous one. Scott Hartnell for RJ Umberger and a 4th exchange did not work. Hiring Dale Weise and Boyd Gordon on July 1, whatever year it happened, was a disaster. The short-term effects of switching from Brayden Schenn to Jori Lehtera and two choices from the first round were felt a lot by the team – the two players in the first round became Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee, so we don’t hate that anymore, but for the moment, losing Brayden Schenn was really difficult.
Another move that I think qualifies as a non-move is entering the 2018-19 season with goalkeeper pair Brian Elliott and Michael Neuvirth. That was just unacceptable, and yet he thought it was okay. (It wasn’t, it wasn’t right)
Q: Why did the Flyers want to change Hextall, did that make sense to you personally at the time? Does it make more sense now?
At the time, it was a shock. We all expected coach Dave Hakstol to be the first victim of the season and we never thought it would be Ron Hextall. After about a week of reflection, it started to make sense, there were a lot of things wrong with that hockey team and the responsibility had to be with the GM eventually.
Now with some distance, yes, for sure, he had to go. If, for no other reason, he was able to admit and accept that mistakes were made (mainly in the form of Dave Hakstol, but there were many others) and the team was suffering from it. Furthermore, as I mentioned before, your assessment of NHL-level talent was not great, both in terms of when to promote a potential customer and when it came to free agents. The bad acquisitions of free agent were sinking the team.
Q: Since Hextall was gone a few years ago, do you have a more positive or negative perception of seeing how some of the movements he did did well?
Both. He did a lot to supply the team with the prospects they would need to be competitive and we are all seeing the fruits of it now. Joel Farabee, Nolan Patrick, Travis Konecny, Ivan Provorov, Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Mark Friedman, Oskar Lindblom, Carter Hart, Connor Bunnaman – these are the guys who played for the Flyers this season and are all chosen from Hextall.
I am resentful of how much time was wasted with an average team with no hope of turning the tables and a GM who wanted to take his time. I respect that he wanted to do it right, but there was a lot of wasted time and many extinct souls watching Andrew MacDonald and Jori Lehtera play for the Flyers.
Q: Finally … this is kind of weird, right? Hextall has always been our enemy; in Pittsburgh, he is most famous for trying to kill Robbie Brown after a goal. This is strange for you too, right?
This is so strange. I called him a blood traitor. These two franchises had been unable to reach an agreement in a Mark Streit exchange for almost four years without Tampa Bay standing between them and making everyone play well. (Speaking of that trade, I just remembered Valtteri Filppula and I’m furious again). Listen, I love all the PensBurgh contributors, but if you have to suffer from what we did with Hextall, I’ll probably laugh a little. But you will have a few drafts before things get off track.
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The Flyers have been trying to fix their goal situation by type, literally, 25 years since Hextall’s first season ended, and it’s interesting to see that he really corrected everything until Hart developed. This can take time and Hextall has made some curious decisions on the network over the years. This can be revealing, since the Pens have had a lot of turbulence and uneven performance in the network in recent years and these decisions will be very important.
Another false narrative, but popular in some circles, is that Hextall will seek to add resistance and physicality to the Penguins. This would be the opposite of what he did in Philadelphia and, as Steph pointed out, one of Hextall’s first moves in his first season was to switch Zac Rinaldo. As Gretz pointed out, the Flyers have noticeably lost all of their fights and fighters during the Hextall period. As I wrote earlier, the ideal Flyer for Hextall is a guy like Konecny who competes a lot among whistles and is very skilled, but he is not particularly intimidating.
The other item that really stood out and that Steph mentioned precisely is Hextall’s perception of “ZOMG he fixed so many mistakes” may not be true. Hextall did not sign a ridiculously bad contract with Andrew MacDonald, but Hextall certainly did not find a way to release him either. The general narrative seems to be hopeful that Hextall will show up, wave a wand and find a way to deal with Mike Matheson’s ridiculously bad contract, but it’s not really as easy as it looks.
Like Pierre LeBrun, I am a big subscriber to the “GM can be much better on his second show because he learned the strings and knows what not to do next time”. Having a sense of the consequences now that it has been some time since Hextall’s first GM job in Philadelphia, he will certainly have to learn some lessons from what went wrong on his first show and apply that to become a better manager for the Penguins.