Report: The ugly details behind Hakstol’s firing in Philly

The Scott Gordon Era… or is it the Carter Hart Era… has officially begun in Philadelphia with both the interim head coach and rookie goalie securing their first wins with the Philadelphia Flyers earlier on Tuesday night. 

The Flyers, of course, fired former head coach Dave Hakstol this past weekend amidst a whirlwind of reporting and misinformation coming out Philly. First Dave Isaac of the Courier-Post reported that Hakstol was fired and that former Chicago Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville was expected to be named as his replacement.

Well… neither ended up being the case. At least not until right away…

Hakstol was 30,000 feet in the air travelling with the Flyers following their loss to the Vancouver Canucks when the news broke, prompting general manager Chuck Fletcher to speed up a firing that he was still unsure of, at least that’s according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.

In his latest 31 Thoughts column for Sportsnet, Friedman breaks down the Hakstol firing and the messy divorce between the team and its third longest tenured coach in franchise history.

Check it out:

Imagine being on Philadelphia’s Sunday flight back from Vancouver. You’re playing cards, watching movies, reading, editing video, sleeping, you name it, whatever, and all of a sudden a sonic boom hits. That’s Dave Isaac’s story from The Courier Post, indicating Dave Hakstol was out and Joel Quenneville was in. Think about how everyone on that plane had to be reacting as the information spread among the group, especially GM Chuck Fletcher and Hakstol. Those two would have been, what, one row apart?

It led to a clumsy, messy dismissal almost 24 hours later, which is unlike this particular GM. It doesn’t fit with his history. As another GM said, “It would bother Chuck to have it play out this way.” Fletcher declined to comment further, not wanting to toss more gasoline on the fire, but after several conversations, here’s a thesis on what happened.

The pushback to the story indicates there was going to be a coaching change, but Fletcher wasn’t going to do it Sunday. (If the team faced any deadline, it was probably to keep it far enough away from Christmas. You don’t want those headlines.) Around the NHL, the biggest indication that the Flyers were not 100 per cent ready was interim coach Scott Gordon not being at practice on Monday. That kind of detail would have been ironed out, instead of adding more weirdness to the saga.

So, what happened? The theory is that after seeing the fallout and sleeping on it Sunday night, Fletcher decided to accelerate the process. It would have been grossly unfair to Hakstol to ask him to coach on Tuesday, especially with what the reaction could have been.

As for the Quenneville report… well who knows? Again from Friedman:

On Joel Quenneville and the Flyers: I’m not so sure this is anywhere close to a slam dunk. Quenneville is taking some time with his family in Colorado. Is he really in a rush to get back behind a bench? We know Philadelphia will pay very well, but, if his first goal is to contend right away, where would they rank as an option? His better choice is to wait and see how things play out over the next six months. A good team is going to lose early in the playoffs and say, “You know what, that guy could help us.”