Danny Briere’s tenure as the General Manager of the Philadelphia Flyers is not even a calendar year old yet. He wasn’t even allowed to make trades until late last spring, opening up the floodgates for what was to come. Yet, so much has been accomplished in that time.
Briere, President of Hockey Operations Keith Jones, and the rest of the new regime are still getting started. They have seemingly done a swell job to this point, but that doesn’t mean they’re in the clear. There’s still a long way to go, and they’ll have to make sure they finish the job. For real this time.
GM Paul Holmgren, who held the title from 2006 to 2014, gets a pass due to what came after him. Both Ron Hextall and Chuck Fletcher had objectively miserable tenures with the Flyers from 2014 to 2023. It could be argued that Hextall at least had a better plan in place, but both of their regimes were essentially a wash regardless. How can the new guys in town learn from this?
Hextall’s era of bad draft luck
An important thing to realize with Hextall is that he kept the major core of Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, and, later, Sean Couturier together and added to that through the draft. Really, his only memorable free agent addition was James van Riemsdyk, but by that time his tenure with the Flyers would only last for another few months.
The problem with that? The so-called “highly-touted” prospects were pretty much all misses. Whether it was rotten injury luck or plain whiffs, many of the young players under him never reached their potential. His plan hinged on their development.
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