That's not true at all, to be honest. The payroll was a little rough thanks to some crappy defensemen on bloated contracts, but only one of them (MacDonald, the worst) had extremely long term remaining at that point—even Pronger's LTIR cap hit would be up within 3 seasons of Hextall taking over.
He inherited a crappy expensive defense, but he also inherited an awesome forward group. Giroux (26), Voracek (25), Simmonds (26), Schenn (23), Couturier (21). Hextall had a lot of options—trade a forward or two for cap relief and D futures, buy out a couple guys and wait...he took none of them. Instead he kept piling on more mediocre cap hits like Medvedev. Signed Gostisbehere and Voracek to really big deals. Drafted really poorly at times.
A savvy GM would have been able to make something out of the situation Hextall took over from Holmgren. Hextall is not that. Fletcher left all of the cap mess with none of the talent. Weird thing to randomly bring up.