There's a weird thing that happens when former players turn to front office jobs after retirement - especially if it's the same city in which they played. They're somehow more relatable and approachable, they feel like someone you already know. This was the case when Ron Hextall came back to Philadelphia in 2013 as assistant general manager under Paul Holmgren. He was coming home.
Fans expected the fiery competitor they remembered in net to bring that same intensity to the front office. And for a while, it seemed like he might. But his tenure wouldn’t end the way anyone imagined.
The 2018–19 Philadelphia Flyers entered the season with starting goaltender Brian Elliott and a rotating cast of backups - Michal Neuvirth, Anthony Stolarz, and Alex Lyon - as injuries hit the crease before training camp was even over. Goaltending has long been a sore spot for the Flyers, but this year it felt more like negligence from the front office than bad luck. Just months earlier, the team had been embarrassed in the playoffs and seemed poised to make a push for redemption. Instead, injuries piled up, consistency never came, and a 10-11-2 record left them sinking fast.
Tensions were rising in Philadelphia. Fans were sick of the rebuild, all the losing, and started calling for change, specifically Head Coach Dave Haksol's job. Holmgren, as team president, and CEO Dave Scott wanted quicker results, but Hextall stayed locked into his long-term plan. That loyalty, combined with his guarded, often insular management style, began to wear thin. It looked like the franchise was wasting the prime years of Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek. To Hextall, the path forward was clear: patience, development, and no shortcuts.
The Flyers lost in spectacular fashion to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sunday night, by Monday morning Flyers PR had sent out an email for a surprise press conference leaving details vague. Everyone assumed it was the press conference where a change in coaching would be announced and we were all wrong. An hour later, the team announced they had relieved Ron Hextall of his duties as Executive Vice President and General Manager.
The press conference with Holmgren and Scott gave fans a lot of insight into the dynamic behind the scenes. They said things like: unyielding, bias for action, and emphasized the need for a different mindset. And Ron took that personally.
"Are there things Ron was thinking about doing to the team? I don’t know. He was unyielding in his plan, and remained that way."Paul Holmgren
So what is a former star player, now disgraced team executive, to do? Spin, baby, spin.
In a move that hadn't happened before and hasn't happened since, Ron Hextall called his own press conference at the Wingate by Wyndham hotel right across the street from Skate Zone in Voorhees, the Flyers practice facility. Hockey has a team first mentality, a culture built around suppressing your individuality and ego for the sake of the team. This was a bold, unprecedented move, and a perfect time capsule of the Flyers issues off the ice for the past decade.
Ron grabbed that microphone and defended himself, saying he owed it to the fans. He said he was blindsided, shocked, and didn't feel the team was at "go time". The presser was full of juicy quotes and insight into the impatience of ownership. “The only thing [Paul Holmgren] said is that ‘your vision and my vision aren’t the same,'" Hextall said when asked what he was told. He explained the three stages to his plan and where he felt the team was in terms of talent and development.
"I really enjoyed working with Dave Scott. He was easy to talk to. Homer and I have known each other a long time."Ron Hextall
He stayed loyal to his guy Dave Hakstol to the end, saying coaching wasn't the issue, instead it was the players.
"TK, he played pretty well but he was snake-bit, and Patty, and Oskar, and Provy, and Ghost, Travis Sanheim — there’s a few more growing pains with our young players than I anticipated. I think that’s a big part of it. And then you get your goalies hurt right way, and we felt like Alex Lyon could possibly fight for a spot, and Stolie, and Alex got hurt in warmups before the Islanders unfortunately, and Neuvy gets hurt right away, and on top of that Ells gets hurt. There were a lot of things that just went the wrong way on us. We’re in the flesh business here and things don’t exactly always go the way you planned."
And then the piece that seemed to really hit a nerve, the treatment of Flyers alumni, of which he was notably one of the crowd!
"I don’t run a country club, I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe you win that way. You know watching out in LA how we did it, and how Clarkie did it, I believe in having tight doors. I believe in the sanctity of the locker room. I believe when the players are in the locker room they should be players, that’s when the team is bonding. I did, after games and practice days, I did close the locker room to people — fathers and kids could come in, obviously, and brothers — but one day I walked in and a guy had four buddies in our lounge on a practice day. This is a place of work, you guys go to work, you don’t bring your four buddies to work, right?"
In the end, the press conference left more questions than answers, but not about Ron Hextall. He made his plan very clear, he explained why he wouldn't. change course, and showed everyone exactlty what Holmgren and Scott were talking about. This was a true clash of philosophies, and maybe a case of too many voices in the room which would be all the more evident with his successor Chuck Fletcher. His long game wasn't entirely wrong, the players he refused to move became the foundation for the post-Hextall Flyers.
That day in a hotel ballroom across from Skate Zone, Hextall showed the stubbornness, conviction, and pride that had defined him as both a player and an executive. And while his tenure will always be debated, one thing is certain: no one in Flyers history has ever gone out quite like Ron Hextall.
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