Flyers management’s expectations this season were to win a playoff round for the first time since 2012. Instead they are dead last in the Eastern Conference with 28 points through Sunday and it has cost coach Dave Hakstol his job.
The Flyers announced Hakstol's firing Monday afternoon, nearly a day after multiple sources told the Courier Post that the Flyers would be firing the coach. Lehigh Valley Phantoms coach Scott Gordon will be the interim head coach.
Sources also indicated that Joel Quenneville, a three-time Stanley Cup champion with the Chicago Blackhawks, has been offered the position and will accept it.
After announcing the firing of Ron Hextall as general manager, Scott told reporters from the Courier Post, Associated Press, Delaware County Daily Times and Allentown Morning Call that Quenneville’s name came up immediately when he was fired by the Blackhawks on Nov. 7. The idea of hiring him was broached with Hextall, but “Ron was saying, ‘Let’s stay the course,'" Scott said.
There is some familiarity between Quenneville and Flyers new general manager Chuck Fletcher.
Fletcher’s father, Cliff, made Quenneville a player-coach with the St. John’s Maple Leafs in the 1991-92 season, his first as president and general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Quenneville, 60, has his name on the Stanley Cup four times as he was also an assistant coach for the Colorado Avalanche in the 1995-96 season. He won the Jack Adams Trophy in the 1999-00 season when he was bench boss of the St. Louis Blues and won the World Cup with Team Canada as an assistant two seasons ago. He had one season remaining on his contract with Chicago reportedly worth $6 million per season. It’s unclear how much of that tab the Flyers picked up or what his contract is in Philadelphia moving forward.
Hakstol had one season remaining on a five-year contract worth a reported $10 million. Coaching contracts are guaranteed so he is still due the remaining money even though he no longer serves that position. He was the 16th coach the Flyers had hired since Fred Shero led them to back-to-back championships in 1974 and 1975. His 277 games rank third all-time among Flyers coaches. He leaves the organization with a record of 134-101-42.
His likely replacement is a future Hall of Famer who is second all-time in NHL coaching wins with 890 and his impressive resume had him at the top of the list for Flyers upper management.
The next coach’s task in taking over for Hakstol is a tall one considering the Flyers fell to last place in the Eastern Conference with their loss to Vancouver Saturday night. They also have the worst home record in the NHL at 5-7-2.
With the addition of James van Riemsdyk in free agency, a 36-goal scorer last season who suffered a knee injury in the second game and missed the next 16 games, the Flyers believed they were on track to at least win their first playoff round since 2012.
Add in the expected growth of young players like first-round picks Ivan Provorov, Travis Konecny and Nolan Patrick and the Flyers thought they were in for more.
So far Patrick and Provorov have had pedestrian starts to the season and Konecny has created offense for every line he’s been on. Sean Couturier, coming off a breakout season in which he finished as the runner-up for the Frank J. Selke Trophy, didn’t have a great start to the season, but has looked more like himself recently.
Part of hiring Hakstol was to ensure the development of prospects with a guy who worked with similarly aged players at North Dakota. Provorov and Konecny improved in their first two seasons, defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere became more well-rounded before his current slump and Travis Sanheim has been one of the Flyers’ better defensemen this season after a shaky rookie campaign.
At the same time, Hakstol’s tools for development were suspect. He would routinely cut down a players’ roles in-game and shelter them from certain situations or opponents. That weighed on the players’ confidence and some of the veterans didn’t agree with the tactic, the Courier Post has learned.
Sanheim, for instance, has been among the best of the Flyers’ blueliners this season and only got a top-four role this week. Last season, Hakstol sat Sanheim for extended periods and had to go down to the minors to work on his game. A benching was deserved after clear defensive struggles, but rather than sitting a few days and learning, the player’s confidence shrank because he wasn’t used at all.
There were other issues, too. The Flyers are a team with little confidence these days. Any time they were down at intermission it seemed Hakstol would throw his lines and defense pairs in a blender to shake things up. As a result, there was no chemistry.
Under Hakstol’s tenure, the Flyers’ penalty kill got worse each year and was never properly addressed. The power play this season is in the bottom five of the league, just like the penalty kill.
The decision on Haktol and his staff was left to Fletcher, who used the five-game road trip to evaluate the team and moving players will likely be next.
A coaching move had long been rumored to be on the horizon in Philadelphia. Hextall didn’t pull the trigger on such a move and neither did team president Paul Holmgren when he fired Hextall.
“I think he’s done a decent job in the circumstances that he’s coached under, particularly this last little while where the goaltending…our top guys are hurt,” Holmgren said on Nov. 27. “We’re trying a lot of different things. Coaching in the NHL is not an easy job. Nobody’s getting off scot-free here. Everyone’s being evaluated. Players know it too. They know they’ve got to do a better job. That’s just the way it is. That’s life in the NHL.”
Follow Dave Isaac on Twitter @davegisaac
