Barely 48 hours after saying he needed more time for a “methodical” review of his head coach, Flyers general manager Ron Hextall fired Craig Berube on Friday morning (see story).
The decision, he said, was made Thursday and Berube was notified on Friday morning.
“As Craig is as a man, he was stoic,” Hextall said (see full transcript). “It was a fairly brief conversation, and that was it. But he was stoic.”
He also added “nothing changed” between Wednesday and now in terms of firing Berube sooner, other than he needed to “put all the facts together.”
"I'll be fine," Berube said. "That's the way it goes. You know me."
The overriding factor involved, Hextall said, was he didn’t feel Berube got enough out of a club that many would argue wasn’t good enough to make the playoffs from the get-go.
“It was a tough decision,” Hextall said. “I believe Craig is an NHL coach and will go on to be an NHL coach.
“But like I said, in the end it’s more collectively as a group, it’s getting the most out of each individual and then collectively pulling that effort together, and in the end squeezing the most out of your team. And that’s the part that I just felt like in the end, it wasn’t enough.”
Hextall wants his next coach in place before the NHL draft on June 26 in Florida.
“In the end we’re looking for the guy who can take this group to another level, not only short term, but long term,” he said.
A league source said the Flyers had their eye on three current NHL coaches who could be free in the weeks ahead: Detroit’s Mike Babcock, whose contract is expiring, Boston’s Claude Julien and San Jose’s Todd McLellan.
Julien and McLellan still hold jobs but could be fired since both teams didn’t make the playoffs.
“I haven’t thought it through,” Hextall said of his coach search. “Obviously you’ve got ideas, but in the end, we’ll do our homework in the next couple weeks and see who the candidates are and start the interview process and go from there.
“In the end, you’re looking for the coach that fits your team, obviously [that] thinks the same way to some degree.”
Berube wasn’t Hextall’s choice but rather his predecessor, Paul Holmgren's.
Hextall has already shown he’s not afraid to reverse some of the moves that Holmgren made and has made it clear his vision for the future is different from those who preceded him in this job.
As such, it’s very likely Hextall will hire from outside the Flyers' organization, which would represent a huge break from its current culture of hiring and promoting from within the Flyers’ tight-knit family.
“We’re going to do our due diligence and look at essentially the whole landscape, and come up with the coach that we feel is the right guy,” Hextall said. “I’m not going to do something in the next couple of weeks for sure.
“You really have to decide, is the coach the right coach for your team now. If the answer to that is no, you need to move on. I’m not going to hedge my bet here and say, 'OK, I see a great coach that I can put in play, so I’m going to make this move.'
“If you don’t think it’s the right head coach, you’ve got to move on, and that’s what we did here. Again, as we get into the summer here and we start to do our research here, we’ll come up with the guy that we feel is the right guy.”
Interestingly, Hextall said Berube’s successor did not necessarily have to be a current NHL coach.
“In a perfect world, that’s one of the things you look for, but that’s not mandatory,” Hextall said. “Again, we’re going to look at every candidate we feel merits looking at, and we’ll go through it from there. Again, is it nice? Yes. Is it imperative? I’d say no.”
Among the most coveted non-NHL coaches is Jeff Blashill of the Red Wing’s AHL club in Grand Rapids. If Babcock re-signs in Detroit, it’s likely Wings GM Ken Holland allows Blashill to seek an NHL job.
Hextall said he spoke to club chairman Ed Snider about his decision but would not divulge what was said. He also admitted during his player exit interviews this week that he did not seek input from the Flyers’ leadership group or any player on Berube.
Why?
“Because it’s a feel,” Hextall replied. “It’s about the evidence on the ice. Obviously, you talk to the players, you get a feel about the team, but I didn’t specifically ask players about the coach.
“I don’t think that’s fair to the coach, because certain players really like the coach and certain players don’t. So if you start asking pinpointing questions, I don’t think it’s fair in the analysis of a coach.”
Some of the coaches available employ far different systems. Dan Bylsma, fired as coach in Pittsburgh year ago, is very offensive-oriented, like Peter Laviolette, while Berube was defensive-oriented.
“I was fine with the system,” Hextall said. “It’s more at times the execution. You have to check in the game today or you can’t win. So you have to check. Obviously you have to score goals too ... you have to get pucks to the net, you have to make plays.
“I didn’t have an issue with the system. Systems all work. It comes down to who executes the best and who’s the most consistent. So I was fine with the system.”
For the time being, Berube’s staff of assistant coaches have jobs. Whether they remain is up to the next coach.
Berube had a year left on his contract, as do all the coaches.