Who knows what gm is out there but is it really a risk that a new gm would do any worse fielding a competitive NHL team as hextall has done so far? Hextall has had 4 full offseasons and barring a major drastic turnaround in the next 2 weeks, his team will have accomplished 1 playoff birth as the last seed in a league where over half of the teams make the playoffs with no real improvement record wise in those 4 years. Now that alone isn't an indictment against him... But if you aren't seeing an improvement in the standings, hopefully youre seeing a major youth infusion to the NHL roster and giving prospects NHL playing time to learn and grow. Every role that is currently filled with a useless vet whose play isnt helping the team now and who will never get any better in the future should have been replaced by a prospect in the beginning of this year at the absolute latest. They have several young players on the phantoms right now that at the absolute worst are equal to those crappy vets but they can actually get better from making mistakes. The team now still has many of the same weaknesses at the NHL level as the team did back in hextalls first season and much of that is his own doing at this point. His team has stagnated the last 2 years and the reason for that is largely his design. For every improvement made to the team by adding the young guys like TK, NP, and Provy to the roster, it has been negated by making brain dead decisions like keeping lehtera, Manning, weise, and flip on the roster. Every year that he has been gm he has aquired a "hard working vet" that has done way more harm to the team than good. Not only that but aquiring said ****ty vets have blocked prospects that are at the very least equal to those trash players now with potential to grow. And if he had kept only the contributing vets on the roster, while waiving the trash, there would not be one single complaint on here about the teams record because we would all be hopeful that the young guys are learning and continue improving. But by having these trash players playing significant NHL time he has delayed that learning season for several important prospects to our future by yet another year and at the rate he is "developing talent", girouxs prime will have been thoroughly wasted and that will be another piece we need to replace. Hextall has done a good job restocking the farm and getting out of cap hell but as far as putting together a competitive team at the NHL level that has the ability to grow together at once, he has failed so far. How many more seasons of mediocrity watching a full line of crappy players get playing time while our prospects rot in the AHL must we endure before saying enough? When you see other teams in this league turn over their roster and get back into contention over the same time period that hextall has had and in some cases bringing their teams out of worse situations than he had, I think it is valid to question whether he has the ability to ice a Stanley cup contending NHL team. Having a loaded pipeline is great but that alone doesn't win Stanley cups. As far as being the right gm to know what pieces he must add to put a team over the top, I can't say his evaluation of aquiring NHL talent has been even average. He has been one of the worst gms in the league at acquiring NHL talent. Other teams are probably laughing their ass off that their cap dumps/rejects are getting significant playing time in Philly. Still I'm not calling for his head and unlike hak, I won't be upset at all if he is retained to give him one final year for the team to show a real improvement and direction towards the future. But at the same time, I wont be upset at all if the teams collapse continues and they miss the playoffs that ownership decides that this season was unacceptable and cleans house firing coaching staff and gm. The net positive of getting rid of the coaching staff would be much greater than the loss of hextall. Since Mr Snider has passed on though, I highly doubt that will happen as the current owners likely only care about their profit and Flyers fans, for better or worse, have continued to give them plenty of that over hextalls tenure.
is there a tl;dr version?
