Former Flyer throws his support behind damning report about Hextall.

A rather damning report surfaced this week following a press conference held by general manager Ron Hextall on Friday that painted the former Flyers legend in a rather damning light, and I must admit that at first I did not take it all that seriously. 

The report which comes from Anthony SanFilippo ofCrossing Broad claimed to have some very damning insight into the inner workings of the Flyers under Hextall, and to put it mildly it made Hextall come off like an absolutely insane control freak. In the report SanFilippo would go on to detail how Hextall had a network of spies within the organization that would report every little detail back to him about players, coaches and even upper management which often resulted in Hextall taking direct action against those involved. Additionally SanFilippo claimed that his sources had informed him that this extended outside of work as well, with spies reporting back behavior from those involved even when they were off the clock as it were.

SanFilippo also went out of his way to dispel the idea that Hextall had gone out of his way to protect head coach Dave Hakstol and in fact claimed that Hextall had "smothered" Hakstol's ability to do his job and coach the team as he saw fit, instead micro managing his every move on a day to day basis. Hextall wanted so much control that he even brought a dietitian on board and would reported "fume" at players who would eat things that were not on the prescribed menu, I think you can start to see the pattern forming here. 

Now all of this is simply one's man word, or at least it was until earlier today when former Philadelphia Flyers forward Riley Cote released a statement of his own, directly in relation to this specific article, that seemed to support everything that was being reported by Crossing Broad.

From Cote:

"I would say this is pretty damn accurate from what Iv seen and learned in the past few days. I don’t care how good of Goalie you were in the 80’s. It means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It’s about how you treat your people. The Flyers will be much better off down the road with this move."

I will admit that I had some serious questions about the decision to fire Hextall considering some of the seemingly shrewd moves he made as general manager of the Flyers, but if he was this much of a negative influence on the franchise I think anyone can understand why he had to be removed from his position.

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