How Much of Fletcher’s Failures is Hextall’s Fault?

Draft Selections

Hexy’s first two drafts were promising. In 2014 he drafted Travis Sanheim in the first round, Nicolas Aube-Kubel in the second, and Oskar Lindblom in the fourth. The following year, the Flyers had two first rounders. Those were spent on Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny. Outside of that, the rest of the draft has had little impact on the team.

The 2016 NHL draft is when things took a turn. First round pick German Rubtsov never played in Philly. Carter Hart, a second rounder has been a great selection but the other second rounder, Pascal Laberge, has been a bust. Other picks from that draft include Wade Allison, Carsen Twarynski, Connor Bunnaman, and Tanner Laczynski. Rubtsov and Bunnaman were traded with Claude Giroux to Florida and Twarnski was selected by Seattle in the expansion draft.

2017 saw the Flyers pick Nolan Patrick with the second overall pick. This was despite objections by others that they should’ve selected Cale Makar instead. Morgan Frost was taken with the second first round pick. Isaac Ratcliffe, recently traded for “future considerations”, was the second round pick. Interestingly enough, the best pick of that draft was fifth rounder Noah Cates. When your best pick is a fifth rounder, that’s probably not a good sign.

In what would end up being his last draft, 2018, the Flyers again had two draft picks. Joel Farabee and Jay O’Brien were both selected in the first round. While Farabee has shown promise, outside of this season, O’Brien has been a huge bust. The other picks from this draft, save for fifth rounder Samuel Ersson, have been busts as well.