The Philadelphia Flyers looked far and wide in their search for their next President of Hockey Operations. Daniel Briere was a shoo-in for the general manager job after being named the interim late in the season, but his right-hand man (or woman) was up in the air.
After a long and extensive search, the Flyers went all the way to their very own broadcast booth to find their next President of Hockey Operations: Keith Jones.
Keith Jones was a decent player, a great analyst, and by all accounts, an even better guy. By no means is this any indictment of him.
Jones can be the people-pleasing, hand-shaking, baby-kissing President of Hockey Operations while Briere has most of the power in terms of roster and personnel decisions.
Thomas Williams
In a vacuum, this makes sense. The Flyers are entering a “new era of orange” and want two new yet familiar faces to represent the franchise.
But we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in reality.
We live in a reality where this is exactly what the Flyers have been doing over and over for the past 20 years. Hockey in Philadelphia is a family – and that’s OK! Anyone who plays for the organization, especially for long stretches of their career, should be considered part of that family. It’s what Ed Snider preached and it’s what made Being A Flyer so special.
But would you trust your family to run a professional sports team?
Sure, it’s not a perfect comparison as the “family” in the Flyers’ sense are people who have some sort of hockey knowledge, but the question remains. And the answer is that you would absolutely not, perhaps with very few exceptions.
Keeping it in the Flyers Family shouldn’t be surprising. It’s what this organization is built on and, despite steadfast messaging that they’d be going in a different direction, it’s going to be more of the same in charge of this iteration of the rebuild.
On one hand, there is some reason for hope. Briere wasn’t just plucked out of the broadcast booth or off the bench to enter the new era of orange.
In 2017, the fan favorite was appointed to run the day-to-day operations of the upstart ECHL Maine Mariners. After a few years there, Briere was named a special assistant to the general manager for the Flyers on February 8th of last year. A little over a year later, he was named the interim general manager after Chuck Fletcher’s final bungled trade deadline.
It became apparent that Briere would likely have the interim tag removed, and he did on Thursday morning. What wasn’t apparent, however, was that the President of Hockey Operations that would be running things with Briere would be someone that the Flyers literally went down the hall to their broadcast booth to find.
The organization sounded like it was finally listening to its fans, or at the very least came to a similar feeling that the fans had in terms of wanting an outside perspective and voice to lead the next rebuild. They even brought in outside help to consult in the hiring search. They still ended up with one of their own.
All of this shows exactly why Flyers fans are increasingly skeptical – and apathetic – toward this organization. While the Stanley Cup drought nears 50 years and the playoff failures have piled up, the Flyers are doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
But maybe we’re the crazy ones. Maybe Briere can be the next Joe Sakic or Steve Yzerman rather than the next Ron Hextall or Paul Holmgren or Bob Clarke.
We’ll have to see it to believe it.
Nick Carroll
