The Philadelphia Flyers returned to the postseason after a one-year hiatus, but that didn’t prevent change at the top of the organization. General manager Paul Holmgren was pushed upstairs in favour of Ron Hextall, an executive who has been long seen as an NHL GM in waiting.
Hextall faces a difficult task in Philadelphia.
The Flyers are not the 100-plus-point regular-season team they were for so many years under Holmgren, and they aren’t the team that could be reliably counted on to win a playoff series every year and go on a deep run some seasons.
The club Hextall inherited is instead a bubble team that was outscored at even strength and squeaked into the playoffs on the back of its special teams.
Things got worse over the summer. The loss of Kimmo Timonen to injury will likely not be made up by the signing of Michael Del Zotto, while the trade of Scott Hartnell for R.J. Umberger moved a good player with a bad contract for a middling player with a bad contract.
A slew of low-end signings—notably depth defender Nick Schultz and Frenchman Pierre-Edouard Bellemare— ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
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