Ron Hextall feels he accomplished some of what he set out to do at the trade deadline in shedding salary cap dollars and acquiring four high draft picks over the next two years for Kimmo Timonen and Braydon Coburn.
He says the next step, in what will be a building process, is using those picks to bolster his roster.
“I think we accomplished part of what we wanted to,” Hextall said. “We’ve got work to do. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and the next two or three years, and we know it. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Hextall said he had no intention of “packing it in” on this season nor did he want to deplete his lineup to the point where he left the Flyers without a roster capable of still qualifying for the playoffs, which he believes is still possible.
“That’s why we didn’t shred things or go beyond where we went,” he said. “We’ve played well without Cobie. We had really good defensemen sitting out. … This worked for us moving forward and helped us with the cap.
“Part of winning is having our cap at a place where we have some flexibility and can do something to have our team better in the summer.”
He said even without Timonen and Coburn, he feels the team can still make a run.
The question that will be asked is whether these moves — the four picks and acquisition of young defenseman Radko Gudas — bring the Flyers any closer to a Stanley Cup down the road.
“We got some pieces, a lot of young prospects, a lot of picks,” Hextall said. “This is only the first part. We got to make them count. We got a lot of work to do. When you look at young players, young assets, we got a lot of them coming.
“That is what excites us when you try to build a top team for an extended period of time. We’re on our way to that. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Chicago took a long time to build. All the top teams take time to build in a salary cap world.”
The Flyers are clearly in a “rebuild” mode without using the word specifically.
The club has $4.9 million cap space at the moment and now has five draft picks among the first three rounds of this summer’s NHL draft. They have 10 picks overall in what is considered a deep draft.
“I think most teams recognize that this year’s a high-end draft, but it’s also deep,” Hextall said. “We didn’t have a second, I don’t think last summer we had a third … we wanted to fill the holes in, and that’s what we did.”
Asked how this additional money helps the Flyers improve next year via free agency come July 1, Hextall replied, “It’s too early to tell.”
“You have to be cognizant of where you are at and look at the year beyond and say, ‘OK, who we have to sign’ and we’re not there yet. We’ve got a lot of planning to do.”
Hextall said he wasn’t close on any other deals, and had plenty of calls from teams about his forwards, besides his defensemen, and could have sliced up his roster had he chosen so.
“We had no intention of packing it in,” he said. “If something made sense for today and the future, we’re going to look at it.
“But we’re not just going to throw away today for a small piece or a secondary piece. We were kind of focused on what we wanted to do, and we did some of those things.”
He would not comment on Vinny Lecavalier, who would have liked to have been traded if there were takers and it’s highly doubtful there were given his $4.5 million cap hit over the next three seasons.
Hextall admitted that the roster space created on defense took into consideration prospects the Flyers are eager to see promoted to the NHL level, starting next season. Shayne Gostisbehere, Sam Morin, Travis Sanheim and Robert Hagg are all vying for at least one spot.
“That’s going to be up to them in training camp,” Hextall said. “We’ll find ways to cover ourselves if the kids aren’t ready. And if they’re ready, we’ll try to have a spot available.”
He said his staff needs to figure out who will be ready and not rush anyone, then be forced to send them back to the minors or junior.
Between the draft and free agency and potential summer deals, the Flyers still have moves to make.
“The deadline is top of the market and there’s a lot of little things that you into your thought process when you’re thinking about what direction, what players,” Hextall said.
“The cap and who you have coming up. Who needs to be signed. A lot of things come into play.”