Well short of the 30-game mark, this NHL season has seen several teams already make major off-ice changes.
And I'm not even counting Steve Yzerman, arguably the best GM in the league, stepping aside from that post with my Tampa Bay Lightning and handing its reigns over to Julien BriseBois. That happened before opening day.
The biggest shoe to fall since opening day was the firing of Joel Quenneville, by Chicago Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman. Quenneville is merely the second-winningest head coach in NHL history, and all he did for the Blackhawks this decade was deliver three Stanley Cups for a franchise that hadn't experienced one since 1961 (and before that hadn't experienced one since FDR's second term).
Hockey teams' game day rosters consist of 20 players. It was not Joel Quenneville's fault that Stan Bowman threw a wet blanket on Chicago's roster by devoting 30 percent of the salary cap to a grand total of two players, one of whom had, in seven years of service, turned in only two 30-goal seasons, neither of which was in the three seasons immediately before. Nor is it Quenneville's fault that Bowman has a track record of failing to understand what Brandon Saad does (actually, does not) bring to the table. Nor is it his fault that Chicago's prospect pipeline has long been thin because the team's scouts are just average and its minor league affiliates do a poor job getting draftees ready for the big show.
But when the inevitable downturn in the Blackhawks' fortunes arrived, there was no way Stan Bowman was going to fire himself. And it would also be exceedingly difficult for him to fire a whole slew of specialists and replace them all. So instead he canned the greatest coach the organization has ever had.
A similar situation played out in Edmonton, where Peter Chiarelli handed a pink slip to Todd McLellan. To be sure, McLellan is nowhere near as good a coach as Joel Quenneville, but then again, the man who fired him is the worst GM in the league one of the most inept executives in the league. It was Chiarelli, not McLellan, who got rid of Taylor Hall and signed a slow, aging Cro Magnon Milan Lucic to a long-term deal because he thought Lucic's plodding skill set would somehow fit with the supersonic one of Connor McDavid. And it is Chiarelli, not McLellan, who talks like he would do that boondoggle all over again.
Meanwhile, John Stevens got the axe in LA and Mike Yeo got it in St. Louis. At least neither of those firings reeked of general managers desperately trying to save their own jobs by making someone else pay for their sins, although it is debatable whether there is much Stevens could have been expected to accomplish with the Kings' current lineup.
By far the most interesting in-season change, however, is the one that went down in the City of Brotherly Love, where Ron Hextall -- a major figure in Philadelphia Flyers history -- was dismissed of his GM duties by team president Paul Holmgren.
If you were to say that Hextall comes from what can be called royal blood in the world of hockey, you would not be off base. His grandfather Bryan was a Hall of Fame winger for the New York Rangers who scored their Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1940. Later, his father Bryan Jr. and uncle Dennis had successful NHL careers of 10 and 14 years, respectively, with the former playing center and the latter left wing.
Hextall has said that when he was a kid he "hated the Flyers" because he saw the Broad Street Bullies dole out some of their patentedcheap shots monster hits on his father and uncle. But as everyone knows, he wound up being a Flyer when he reached the NHL, and not only that: He became one of the most famous and popular Flyers ever.
Unlike his forebears, Ron Hextall chose to be a goalie, and his manner of goaltending was revolutionary because he thrived on coming out of the crease and skating with the puck like a forward or blueliner would. Operating on the theory that the other team can't shoot the puck if you are the one controlling it, Hextall used his superior skating and deft stick work to carry the play away from opponents and feed teammates with outlet passes, triggering offensive rushes or, at the very least, clearing things out of the Flyers' defensive zone. He was the first goalie to score a goal during a regular season game on a rink-length shot -- and also the first to do it during a playoff game.
In his rookie season of 1986-87, Hextall won the Vezina Trophy and led the Flyers all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals before they fell in seven games to the Edmonton Oilers, who were then at the height of their dynasty. His play was so clutch and indispensable during their playoff run that he accomplished the rare feat of being named the league's playoff MVP despite not being on the team that won it all. His Game Six performance, in which he forced the series to a seventh game by fending off an onslaught by Edmonton's snipers, was so good that Wayne Gretzky told reporters "Hextall is probably the best goaltender I've ever seen in the National Hockey League, that I've ever played against."
What endeared him to Philly fans as much as the results, however, was how he wore his heart on his sleeve with his tempestuous play. The kind of player who would break his stick over the crossbar, or swing it at a foe to keep him in check, or engage in fistfights with opponents if he thought it would give his team an edge, Hextall had more than 100 penalty minutes in each of his first three seasons in the league. No other goalie in history has had more than 70, and only three have had more than 60.
'Tis ironic that the child who despised the Broad Street Bullies became a man who would have fit right in on that club. Which helps makes his tenure as Philly's general manager and recent dismissal from that post even more interesting, to use the word I used above.
When he became GM in May 2014, Hextall replaced none other than Paul Holmgren, the same man who fired him this week. His first order of business was to clean up an albatross of a mess that Holmgren had created with regard to the salary cap, and clean it up he did, despite not having much leverage in trade negotiations.
Hextall moved out good but overpaid veterans to liberate the team from their contracts; and he did this not in exchange for other veterans of comparable ability, but for prospects and draft picks whose purpose was to bear fruit in the future.
This change in approach came with owner Ed Snider's blessing, as the organization had for years been rash in swinging immediately for the fences rather than methodical in building the kind of team that could be a true and consistent contender for la Coupe Stanley.
The change was not necessarily bad, for how can building for the future be bad? Especially when your starting point of salary cap hell means you have to step backward before you can step forward?
The problem is that beyond those players who got salary-dumped, the Flyers' core still had (and has) major talent. Which means the course correction had the effect of squandering, or at least threatening to squander, the prime playing years of Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, and Wayne Simmonds. Flyer fans know how good those players are, and as they watched one year after another of Hextall's rebuild go by without any discernible change in the on-ice results, they grew restless -- as did those who sit above Hextall on the org chart.
Three things about Hextall's tenure occupied the negative spectrum that runs between the adjectives "troubling" and "mystifying": The coaching situation, goaltending situation, and something dissonant about his personality.
In May 2015 he hired Dave Hakstol away from the University of North Dakota to become the 19th head coach in Flyers history. While there is no denying the success Hakstol had in his 11 years at the helm of UND, bringing a skipper from the NCAA directly to the NHL was a gamble that hadn't been tried in 33 years, and some people believe Hextall's objectivity was compromised by the fact that his son played for Hakstol in college.
Hakstol's teams in Philly have been simultaneously mediocre and inconsistent. They have been marked by an identity crisis and have not moved in any noticeable direction as each season has unfolded. Now in his fourth year, it is not like he hasn't been given ample time to move the needle, and it is not like he hasn't had talent to work with, yet the needle remains stuck.
Fans have been calling for Hakstol's head, and it seems that at least some people in ownership and upper management have as well. But all the way through his own firing, Hextall stubbornly stood by the coach and counseled everyone to be patient and give him more time.
And the situation between the pipes has possibly been even more aggravating for Flyer partisans than the situation on the bench. From Bernie Parent to Pelle Lindbergh to Ron Hextall himself, Philadelphia once had a proud goaltending tradition. But that tradition has vanished over the last 20 years, and it has been the Flyers' weakness in net that, more than anything else, has kept them from becoming a real contender.
Given that Hextall was a goalie and everyone knows you can't contend for championships without excellent goaltending, most people assumed he would orchestrate a major upgrade in that area. So, the fact that goaltending remains the team's most glaring weakness 4+ years after he took over has caused considerable consternation for everybody who wants the team to succeed.
Whether it is fair to blame Hextall for that is up for debate. Upper crust goalies don't grow on trees. Teams that have them almost always sign them to lucrative extensions before they reach free agency, and are loath to trade them for anything other than a king's ransom that would gut the team on the other side of the deal.
On top of that, it is notoriously difficult to forecast how well a young netminder will do when he faces NHL offenses, which helps explain why you almost never see a goalie taken with a high draft pick.
It's not like Hextall has done nothing to address the goaltending. He did draft then-17-year-old Carter Hart in 2016, and there are more than a few hockey insiders who expect Hart to be the real deal... but there is a lot of time between when a kid is a 17-year-old playing in juniors and when he is a man playing in the NHL, and Hextall has failed to successfully bridge that gap where the Flyers are concerned.
Philly's goalies to start this season were Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth, who are respectively 33 and 30 years old and have both had numerous injury problems over the years. Elliott has a reputation for underachieving in the playoffs, based on his years in St. Louis; Neuvirth has not seen the second round of the playoffs since 2011, his first full season with the Washington Capitals, when they got swept by Tampa Bay despite being the top seed. Meanwhile, Carter Hart is currently playing his first season in the AHL and having a rough go of it as he struggles to get his save percentage above .900.
In short, Ron Hextall failed to fix the Flyers' most obvious and pressing personnel need. That definitely hurt his cause. And although it sounds strange to say this about a man who once played with a violent temper befitting the Tasmanian Devil, his calm and even-keeled personality also hurt his cause.
Of course there is nothing wrong with being calm and even-keeled in the midst of competition, as evidenced by the fact that Tony Dungy has won just as many Super Bowls as Mike Ditka. Certainly Ron Hextall wants to win badly, and certainly the lack of on-ice advancement made him stew inside. But never showing that he was stewing, and continuing to preach patience while the results stayed the same, made it look like he had no sense of urgency. And in this city, for this franchise, with these fans, that will never cut it.
So he has been shown the door, even though a strong case can be made that the man below him and the man above him should have both been shown the door first. I am skeptical whether this particular change will make a difference, for it seems to me that the Flyers franchise as a whole has been sailing without a rudder ever since Ed Snider, its founder and owner, died of cancer. It seems to me that wholesale institutional changes, not just the replacement of one executive, are needed to right the ship.
Not that I care. It's fine with me if the Flyers continue to list this way and that without ever moving forward, for I am a Lightning fan. Like everybody who is good and decent, and who is also not from Eastern PA or Southern Jersey or than little state known as Delaware, I feel as though it is my patriotic duty to root against any team from Philadelphia.
But I also know it's not as fun to root against a bully when his biceps have shriveled and he's no longer a bully. The NHL lost some of its punch and edge when the Flyers changed from daunting to whimpering, and it might be good for the NHL if they find a way to change back.
Hextall has said that when he was a kid he "hated the Flyers" because he saw the Broad Street Bullies dole out some of their patented
Unlike his forebears, Ron Hextall chose to be a goalie, and his manner of goaltending was revolutionary because he thrived on coming out of the crease and skating with the puck like a forward or blueliner would. Operating on the theory that the other team can't shoot the puck if you are the one controlling it, Hextall used his superior skating and deft stick work to carry the play away from opponents and feed teammates with outlet passes, triggering offensive rushes or, at the very least, clearing things out of the Flyers' defensive zone. He was the first goalie to score a goal during a regular season game on a rink-length shot -- and also the first to do it during a playoff game.
In his rookie season of 1986-87, Hextall won the Vezina Trophy and led the Flyers all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals before they fell in seven games to the Edmonton Oilers, who were then at the height of their dynasty. His play was so clutch and indispensable during their playoff run that he accomplished the rare feat of being named the league's playoff MVP despite not being on the team that won it all. His Game Six performance, in which he forced the series to a seventh game by fending off an onslaught by Edmonton's snipers, was so good that Wayne Gretzky told reporters "Hextall is probably the best goaltender I've ever seen in the National Hockey League, that I've ever played against."
What endeared him to Philly fans as much as the results, however, was how he wore his heart on his sleeve with his tempestuous play. The kind of player who would break his stick over the crossbar, or swing it at a foe to keep him in check, or engage in fistfights with opponents if he thought it would give his team an edge, Hextall had more than 100 penalty minutes in each of his first three seasons in the league. No other goalie in history has had more than 70, and only three have had more than 60.
'Tis ironic that the child who despised the Broad Street Bullies became a man who would have fit right in on that club. Which helps makes his tenure as Philly's general manager and recent dismissal from that post even more interesting, to use the word I used above.
When he became GM in May 2014, Hextall replaced none other than Paul Holmgren, the same man who fired him this week. His first order of business was to clean up an albatross of a mess that Holmgren had created with regard to the salary cap, and clean it up he did, despite not having much leverage in trade negotiations.
Hextall moved out good but overpaid veterans to liberate the team from their contracts; and he did this not in exchange for other veterans of comparable ability, but for prospects and draft picks whose purpose was to bear fruit in the future.
This change in approach came with owner Ed Snider's blessing, as the organization had for years been rash in swinging immediately for the fences rather than methodical in building the kind of team that could be a true and consistent contender for la Coupe Stanley.
The change was not necessarily bad, for how can building for the future be bad? Especially when your starting point of salary cap hell means you have to step backward before you can step forward?
The problem is that beyond those players who got salary-dumped, the Flyers' core still had (and has) major talent. Which means the course correction had the effect of squandering, or at least threatening to squander, the prime playing years of Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, and Wayne Simmonds. Flyer fans know how good those players are, and as they watched one year after another of Hextall's rebuild go by without any discernible change in the on-ice results, they grew restless -- as did those who sit above Hextall on the org chart.
Three things about Hextall's tenure occupied the negative spectrum that runs between the adjectives "troubling" and "mystifying": The coaching situation, goaltending situation, and something dissonant about his personality.
In May 2015 he hired Dave Hakstol away from the University of North Dakota to become the 19th head coach in Flyers history. While there is no denying the success Hakstol had in his 11 years at the helm of UND, bringing a skipper from the NCAA directly to the NHL was a gamble that hadn't been tried in 33 years, and some people believe Hextall's objectivity was compromised by the fact that his son played for Hakstol in college.
Hakstol's teams in Philly have been simultaneously mediocre and inconsistent. They have been marked by an identity crisis and have not moved in any noticeable direction as each season has unfolded. Now in his fourth year, it is not like he hasn't been given ample time to move the needle, and it is not like he hasn't had talent to work with, yet the needle remains stuck.
Fans have been calling for Hakstol's head, and it seems that at least some people in ownership and upper management have as well. But all the way through his own firing, Hextall stubbornly stood by the coach and counseled everyone to be patient and give him more time.
And the situation between the pipes has possibly been even more aggravating for Flyer partisans than the situation on the bench. From Bernie Parent to Pelle Lindbergh to Ron Hextall himself, Philadelphia once had a proud goaltending tradition. But that tradition has vanished over the last 20 years, and it has been the Flyers' weakness in net that, more than anything else, has kept them from becoming a real contender.
Given that Hextall was a goalie and everyone knows you can't contend for championships without excellent goaltending, most people assumed he would orchestrate a major upgrade in that area. So, the fact that goaltending remains the team's most glaring weakness 4+ years after he took over has caused considerable consternation for everybody who wants the team to succeed.
Whether it is fair to blame Hextall for that is up for debate. Upper crust goalies don't grow on trees. Teams that have them almost always sign them to lucrative extensions before they reach free agency, and are loath to trade them for anything other than a king's ransom that would gut the team on the other side of the deal.
On top of that, it is notoriously difficult to forecast how well a young netminder will do when he faces NHL offenses, which helps explain why you almost never see a goalie taken with a high draft pick.
It's not like Hextall has done nothing to address the goaltending. He did draft then-17-year-old Carter Hart in 2016, and there are more than a few hockey insiders who expect Hart to be the real deal... but there is a lot of time between when a kid is a 17-year-old playing in juniors and when he is a man playing in the NHL, and Hextall has failed to successfully bridge that gap where the Flyers are concerned.
Philly's goalies to start this season were Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth, who are respectively 33 and 30 years old and have both had numerous injury problems over the years. Elliott has a reputation for underachieving in the playoffs, based on his years in St. Louis; Neuvirth has not seen the second round of the playoffs since 2011, his first full season with the Washington Capitals, when they got swept by Tampa Bay despite being the top seed. Meanwhile, Carter Hart is currently playing his first season in the AHL and having a rough go of it as he struggles to get his save percentage above .900.
In short, Ron Hextall failed to fix the Flyers' most obvious and pressing personnel need. That definitely hurt his cause. And although it sounds strange to say this about a man who once played with a violent temper befitting the Tasmanian Devil, his calm and even-keeled personality also hurt his cause.
Of course there is nothing wrong with being calm and even-keeled in the midst of competition, as evidenced by the fact that Tony Dungy has won just as many Super Bowls as Mike Ditka. Certainly Ron Hextall wants to win badly, and certainly the lack of on-ice advancement made him stew inside. But never showing that he was stewing, and continuing to preach patience while the results stayed the same, made it look like he had no sense of urgency. And in this city, for this franchise, with these fans, that will never cut it.
So he has been shown the door, even though a strong case can be made that the man below him and the man above him should have both been shown the door first. I am skeptical whether this particular change will make a difference, for it seems to me that the Flyers franchise as a whole has been sailing without a rudder ever since Ed Snider, its founder and owner, died of cancer. It seems to me that wholesale institutional changes, not just the replacement of one executive, are needed to right the ship.
Not that I care. It's fine with me if the Flyers continue to list this way and that without ever moving forward, for I am a Lightning fan. Like everybody who is good and decent, and who is also not from Eastern PA or Southern Jersey or than little state known as Delaware, I feel as though it is my patriotic duty to root against any team from Philadelphia.
But I also know it's not as fun to root against a bully when his biceps have shriveled and he's no longer a bully. The NHL lost some of its punch and edge when the Flyers changed from daunting to whimpering, and it might be good for the NHL if they find a way to change back.
