Breaking: Hakstol not the ice for practice, has officially been fired.

Well the Philadelphia Flyers sure dragged this one out for a lot longer than they needed to.

According to a breaking news reporting from John Boruk, Flyers insider for NBC Sports, the Flyers have now officially confirmed what we have been reporting for the past 2 days, head coach Dave Hakstol has in fact been relieved of his duties. The news comes off the heels of some strong public denials from the Flyers organization following the news that began to leak out on Saturday night, and reached a fever pitch on Sunday when several credible sources began to confirm those rumors.

Although some top shelf reporters had attached their reputations to the fact that Hakstol had in fact been fired there were reports as early as this morning that featured quotes from members of the Flyers front office making it clear that Dave Hakstol remained the organizations head coach. Why the situation was dragged out in such a manner is anyone's guess but at least now we know for sure that the reports were credible, and that the Flyers were merely playing public relations games. Honestly not a great look for a team that has been such a mess this season both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes based on some of the reports that followed the firing of former Flyers general manager Ron Hextall.

Of course now all of the attention will turn towards who will be the next head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. According to a report from Flyers' insider Dave Isaac, the first man who reported in print that his sources had informed him Hakstol would be fired either Sunday or Monday, it has been assistant coach Kris Knoblauch running the Flyers practice today which could potentially indicate that the Flyers will be moving forward with an interim head coach at this time, although that is purely speculative on my part.

In his report regarding the Hextall firing Isaac indicated that it would be head coach Joel Quenneville taking over the job but we has as of yet to hear anything on that front, and Quenneville has thus far denied those claims. It will be interesting to see, if Quenneville does indeed take the job, if he would join a struggling team mid season when it looks like they are set to miss the playoffs, or if he opts to wait and join the team for the start of the next season.

Update: Scot Gordon, currently coaching in the American Hockey League for the Flyers organization, will now take over as head coach.

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