Upon the conclusion of the 2014-15 season, Flyers GM Ron Hextall had a checklist of items.
Find a new head coach to take his visions and blueprints of the roster and make them work on the ice. Check. Dave Hakstol makes the jump from the NCAA to the NHL in 2015-16.
Acquire a stud defenseman. Check. Ivan Provorov will be here soon enough, if not on opening night this season. He may be that close to NHL ready.
Acquire a scoring winger. Check it off with a pencil.
Hextall’s got the coach and the defenseman and started to get the ball rolling on the scoring winger with the acquisition of Sam Gagner, in a trade that cleared sizable cap room, and drafting Travis Konecny.
As Hextall said, it doesn’t solve all of their cap problems, but it is a good start.
With the freed up cap space, the Flyers move forward in finishing the offseason plan. That includes signing a backup goalie, re-signing Michael Del Zotto, potentially exploring a contract extension for Jake Voracek and exploring the free-agent market for potential forwards who could also help the Flyers.
The Flyers could also explore internal moves. Currently, nine players are listed as centers on the roster. But there is a good chance that Gagner and Brayden Schenn will get playing time on the wing next season instead. So there could be a lot of line shuffling happening while the Flyers see what they have.
It’s already been a busy offseason for Hextall outside of the big moves. In addition to the trades of Zac Rinaldo and Nicklas Grossmann, Hextall also gave new contracts to pending free agents Chris VandeVelde and Ryan White. He hired a goalie coach in Kim Dillabaugh, formerly of the Los Angeles Kings.
Hextall’s offseason is far from over. He’s still working on lowering the cap and trying to build the best team possible for the 2015-16 season.
He wants this team to be competitive next season. They won’t turn into a Stanley Cup contender overnight, but Hextall is bound and determined to get this team back to the playoffs.
This weekend was just another chapter in Hextall’s quest to build that contender. It further proved he has the trust of the fanbase and the organization to get the Flyers to the promised land. And when it really counted, Hextall was a man on a mission that didn’t seem to stop, and still hasn’t.
The weekend was his and everyone else was just a part of it.
When your second-year GM is already garnering praise and getting picked as the early favorite for GM of the year in 2015-16, that’s a pretty good sign.
Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
