After playing career, detour to L.A shaped Hextall's vision for Flyers

VOORHEES, N.J. -- If there is a feeling that Ron Hextall never left at all, that he just traded one set of Philadelphia Flyers gear for another en route to becoming the team's general manager, that's all it is: a feeling.

To understand how Hextall got here, and how the team ended up on its current path, you also have to understand not just how Hextall left, but how and why he returned.

The man who played 608 NHL games -- 499 of them in a Flyers uniform -- chuckles when he's asked whether he recalls his last game with Philadelphia. He does.

"I think I let in a really bad goal," he recalled.

At the end of the 1998-99 season, he had no idea it would be not just his last game as a Flyer, but his last game as a player. After the season ended, the Flyers told Hextall they wouldn't be bringing him back. Later that offseason, he received a two-year offer from the Calgary Flames.

He didn't respond either way to the offer, but began working out.

"All I had to do was sign it," Hextall said of the offer.

But he didn't, and after a few weeks, the Flames moved on, acquiring another netminder. Were there regrets?

"No," he said. "You know what, the biggest thing was my body was breaking down. I had a really bad hip. I knew I had a bad hip, but I probably denied how bad it was. So do I regret it? No.

"It's funny, because as an athlete you always want to play, and I wanted to play bad."

In the end, though, Hextall had to balance the emotion of wanting to play and what his head was telling him: It was time to move on. That kind of deliberate thought process has served him well in his second career as a manager and evaluator of player talent.

As soon as it was clear Hextall wasn't going to play, Flyers GM Bob Clarke asked him what he wanted to do. Hextall wasn't interested in coaching and felt he needed separation from his teammates, so he told Clarke he'd like to learn the management side of things. He began scouting for the Flyers.

He remained with the team that had first drafted him in 1982, staying on for seven years after he stopped playing before having to make a life-changing decision.

Working behind Clarke and then-assistant GM Paul Holmgren, it was clear Hextall would have to move to another team if he was going to continue to move up the organizational chart and ultimately to become an NHL general manager. That team ended up being the Los Angeles Kings.

"That was probably the toughest decision I've ever made in my life. I had extremely strong ties with the organization," Hextall said. "I had strong ties with Bob Clarke, Paul Holmgren, [Flyers owner Ed] Snider. The area.

"But I felt like if I did want to pursue my dream, I had to get going, I felt like I had to become a No. 2 guy.".

Funny how it works, no?

If Hextall hadn't gone to Los Angeles to work with GM Dean Lombardi in rebuilding the long-suffering Kings, Hextall's view of the league, of how teams are constructed and operate, would be completely different. And without those experiences, he might not be the man he is now or the right man to lead the Flyers forward.

"I learned a lot in L.A. obviously from Dean," Hextall said. "He's very analytical. Also the process that we went through. Because when we went out there we weren't a very good team.

"We pretty much changed everything. The staff, trainers, coaches, scouts, so the experience that I got there in hiring people and changing things and essentially building a team from the ground up, I think it was invaluable experience because I think, quite frankly, in Philly we never had to do that because we were always a very good team.

"Because, before the salary cap you could spend more than other teams and we would keep our own players and continue to build and build and try and get better every year. And it's different now in a cap era. You've got to be very careful on where you spend your money and how much space you have available. You have to be very diligent in your planning in terms of when contracts expire and who's going to be up and whatnot."

Hextall returned to the Flyers in the spring of 2013, having won a Cup in L.A. in 2012, and was named the Flyers' assistant general manager. Few were surprised when he became the GM a year later, after Holmgren stepped into the team president's role.

The transition has not been without its challenges.

There were contracts that hampered the team's ability to move forward, although Hextall has been innovative and sometimes just plain hard-nosed in dealing with those obstacles. He traded Chris Pronger's contract to Arizona along with defenseman Nicklas Grossmann, and banished Andrew MacDonald and his bloated six-year deal to the minors.

He somehow convinced rookie Boston GM Don Sweeney to part with a third-round pick for the thuggish Zac Rinaldo.

It's still not clear sailing, though. Vincent Lecavalier still has two more seasons at $4.5 million in average annual cap hit.

But Hextall is nothing if not dogged in his determination to follow the game plan he developed no matter what happens, and believes the Flyers are headed in the right direction.

"We're way ahead. We're way ahead of where we were in L.A.," Hextall said. "I think you talk about Philly, the Flyers, what aligns there to me is I believe in hard work, I believe in will, I believe in battles, that's really what Flyer hockey is all about."

"That's not going to change -- certainly under my watch. The game has evolved and we have to evolve with the game. So Flyer hockey now compared to the '70s, is it different? Of course it's different, because the game is different. But the foundation that this organization's all about, hard-nosed, gritty, battling hockey, is not going to change."

Spoken like a true Flyer, even if it's a Flyer who had to go somewhere else in order to come home.