It’s still happening, folks! The Flyers are continuing with their housekeeping and it seems their next order of business was hiring a new Assistant GM (and Vice President), after the firing of Chris Pryor a few weeks back. They’ve brought in Brent Flahr for this role, and this doesn’t feel like much of a surprise.
There had been a rumor kicking around since, well, last night that Flahr was going to be the one, and he makes sense. He worked with Chuck Fletcher during his time in Minnesota, where he did much of the same work that he’ll be tasked with in Philly. Here’s what Fletcher had to say about our newest front office member:
“Brent brings over 20 years of experience in the National Hockey League and an extraordinary amount of knowledge to our hockey club. I’ve known Brent for many years and his track record speaks for itself as a scout, assistant general manager and even general manager of an AHL team. His expertise of building and growing a strong foundation will be extremely valuable at all levels as we look to take the next step in our path toward winning a championship.”
As these comments suggest, Flahr will be overseeing the Flyers’ scouting department and development of the prospects, while also being asked to weigh in on other player personnel decisions. And that is, well, that’s quite a lot. And it’s weighty work, as well, considering the expectations we’ve set of the club, in recent years. We expect that the team will draft well, and that they may have some exciting picks outside of the first few rounds. We expect that those prospects will develop well and perform well once they hit the professional level. We expect a farm team that’s competitive. We expect that at least some of these prospects may eventually be impact players at the NHL level. It’s a lot to ask, but perhaps it’s not really all that unreasonable.
So, all that said, welcome, friend. We’ll see how this goes.
