Analyzing Ron Hextall's trade deadline moves

Share

Ron Hextall’s first NHL trade deadline day offered yet another example of his philosophy of looking toward the future without compromising the organization’s long-term vision.

This summer, the Flyers will have a virtual smorgasbord of draft picks –- 10 through seven rounds.

The last time that happened was in 2006.

Sadly, the only player remaining a Flyer from that ’06 draft was their No. 1 pick and current franchise player, Claude Giroux.

To fully comprehend what things used to be like with the Flyers and their draft picks, all you have to do is take a trip back to the start of the new millennium.

Between 2000 and 2005, the organization didn’t have a single second-round draft pick among six drafts.

From 2006 through last summer’s draft, held here in Philadelphia -- nine drafts -- the Flyers had a total of just seven picks in the second round. In six of those drafts, they didn’t even have seven overall picks through seven rounds.

Trading Kimmo Timonen and Braydon Coburn netted the Flyers four draft picks, three that come this summer: a first, second and third.

They now have five picks (including their own) through the first three rounds of the draft. The last time they had anything resembling that many picks through three rounds was 2003, when they had two first-round choices (Jeff Carter and Mike Richards) and five third-round picks.

None of the players selected in that draft remain within the organization, which raises a central issue that Hextall spoke of during Monday’s trade deadline news conference: patience with prospects.

For more than 15 years, under both Bob Clarke and Paul Holmgren, the Flyers sacrificed their future to accommodate a “win now” philosophy that saw them make two trips to Stanley Cup Final between 1997 and 2013, without winning the silver chalice.

From the day Hextall returned here last May, he emphasized “patience” in a long-term rebuild that wasn’t going to happen overnight.

Keep your picks, your prospects, develop your own.

The failure to adhere to such a plan is why the Flyers haven’t had their own franchise goalie since, well, Hextall himself (1982 draft).

It’s why the club hasn’t had a drafted, developed first-pair defenseman since Chris Therien (1990 draft).

Patience.

“The biggest mistake a manager can make is being too impatient with young kids,” Hextall said. “It takes time, and it takes some of them a little bit longer than others. I think history shows that certain teams, you get a little anxious for a player to become really, really dominant, and all of a sudden you trade him and he becomes the player you thought he could be.

“So you’ve got to be really careful with young kids. Prime, what is it, 25 or 26 maybe to start … so if you look at some young players who have been around three or four years, and you start thinking we need more, we need more … yeah, you want more, but you’ve got to be really careful there. You could be giving something up with [someone] you think might not get there, and you forget how young he is.”

Want some examples? Think of four former Flyers who blossomed after being sent packing during their youth here:

· Left wing Ruslan Fedotenko. Won a Stanley Cup in Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh.
· Defenseman Dennis Seidenberg. Won a Cup in Boston.
· Right wing Justin Williams. Won a Cup in Carolina; two Cups in Los Angeles.
· Center/left wing Patrick Sharp: Won two Cups in Chicago.

Carter and Richards won two Cups in L.A., as well, but the circumstances of their trades were different in that they were already proven and landed the Flyers additional assets that still remain.

James van Riemsdyk hasn’t won a Cup in Toronto but has demonstrated the untapped offensive potential he possesses on a bad team.

Look at the L.A. Kings' Stanley Cup roster from last June. Hextall, serving as GM Dean Lombardi’s assistant, hand a direct hand in drafting or developing those players.

“When you look at young pieces, young assets, we've got a lot of them coming,” Hextall said of the Flyers. “That's what excites us. You're tying to build towards a top team for an extended period of time, and I think we're on the way to that.

“Rome wasn't built in a day. Chicago took a long time to build. All the top teams take time to build in the salary cap world. You'd love to just go out July 1 and buy everything [in free agency], but we can't do it anymore.”

Next fall, the Flyers will have at least one homegrown defensive prospect on their roster from among Shayne Gostisbehere, Sam Morin, Travis Sanheim and Robert Hagg.

Scott Laughton could find a permanent home here at center. A couple Phantoms prospects will compete on the wings.

Things are changing.

In the past, the Flyers tried to win the Cup with playoff-hardened, older veterans. Think of Ken Hitchcock’s 2003-04 club that lost a gut-wrenching, seven-game Eastern Conference Final series to Tampa Bay.

That club had a veteran All-Star cast, assembled from everywhere: Keith Primeau, Alexei Zhamnov, Jeremy Roenick, Tony Amonte, John LeClair, Sami Kapanen, Vladimir Malakhov, Marcus Ragnarsson etc.

All those players were acquired via trades or free agency -- not home-grown products.

That kind of assembly has already begun to change under Hextall and give way to younger players.

“You’re always going to have what you call older guys on your team, particularly when you get to be a top team,” Hextall said. “Sometimes your younger guys, as your older guys get older, your younger guys come up and take a little bigger piece of the pie so those older guys don’t have to be quite as productive.

“It’s kind of a balancing act. Guys are going to age. That’s reality. But I think if you look at a lot of our group, they’re younger guys with at least upside, or they’re going to be able to sustain where they’re at right now for the distant future here.

“We don’t have any older players that you feel like we’ve got to move on from here because they’re going to hurt us. There’s contracts that are going to expire in the next couple of years, and that’s kind of the process you continually go through.”

Contact Us