May 19, 2015
For a sports town with a fan base as rabid and supposedly as demanding as Philadelphia, the new mantra appears to be “Let’s build something for the future.”
The Sixers go into tonight’s lottery with hopes of acquiring another chip to pluck another piece or two from the upcoming NBA draft to build toward that future.
A day earlier, the Flyers stunned the entire NHL by hiring a coach right out of college, choosing Dave Hakstol of North Dakota.
If you are counting, men who are in charge of their first big-league team are now coaching Philadelphia’s four major sports franchises: Ryne Sandberg with the Phillies, Chip Kelly with the Eagles, and Brett Brown with the Sixers complete the grand slam.
What’s going on here?
Have we all been Hinkie-ized by the general manager of the Sixers? Are we all secure in the fact that a step backward is better than four steps to the side, and more than willing to provide a luxury rarely seen in Philadelphia – patience?
One of the reasons there might be more willingness to take a more patient approach is the outright success of Kelly, who has won 20 games over two seasons since arriving from Oregon. Somewhat forgotten in the course of the first two years of Kelly’s regime is the severe doubt that surrounded the franchise when they hired him.
The comparables were not good. Time and again it seemed that coaches came out of college and stumbled in the NFL. However, Kelly came on board with a radical approach and in his first year the Eagles were a focal point of the NFL, and Kelly was being viewed as one of those visionaries who actually causes changes in the way the game is played.
Since that time, there have been some major concerns as he made questionable roster moves, but the very fact he could move a franchise running back, franchise receiver and starting quarterback – and still have most fans think of the team as on the rise is a testament to how much people have bought into his culture.
In fact, the success of Kelly made it a whole lot easier for even casual hockey fans to take a positive outlook on what Flyers coach Ron Hextall did when he really rolled the dice this week and hired Hakstol out of a college program.
If you thought Kelly was a stretch going to the Eagles, this hiring by the Flyers is a stretch of faith beyond anything seen in the NHL for over a generation. Not since 1982, when the Calgary Flames hired Bob Johnson out of Wisconsin, has an NHL team handed over the coaching keys to a man right out of U.S. college hockey.
More than anything else, this was a statement by Hextall that he is going to do things his way, and he wants people on his wavelength at every level of the organization. You had better believe that Hextall knows for sure that he and Hakstol share the same philosophies, and you had also better believe that this is just the beginning of a series of moves within the organization to have everybody on the same page.
It is nothing new for the Flyers to go outside of their organization to get things changed. Like most NHL teams, the Flyers sift through coaches on short cycles, and over the past 10 coaches, five have come from inside the organization – and five from outside.
Check out the last few changes:
Bill Barber an inside guy, to Ken Hitchcock from outside; Hitchcock to an inside guy, John Stevens; Stevens to an outside guy, Peter Laviolette; Laviolette to an inside guy, Craig Berube; and now Berube to Hakstol.
The difference here is that Dave Hakstol was not brought in with an idea that this is going to be a quick fix. The difference here is that there will be some breathing room to get things done, to get an organizational system in place.
There is no wild demand that they go out and get one particular player to get them over the hump. Instead, the hope is that Hakstol can help bring along a highly touted group of young defensemen who should be hitting NHL ice as quickly as this season, and certainly over the next few seasons.
Certainly, there will be some immediacy. For one thing, the new coach should not be saddled with the issue of how to shoehorn Vinny Lecavalier into the lineup. And you can also assume a new crew of assistant coaches, and some roster changes up front before the start of the season.
These are things that would happen with any new coach. The difference is that there will be time and there should be patience. In fact, there is enough patience that the fan base is not all up in arms that the Flyers did not go out and use a big wallet to sign Mike Babcock.
Nope.
Just like the fans of the Eagles and Sixers, there is that small change in demands. They want to win, but they are willing to take at least some time to build a winner.
Truthfully, part of the reason for this new-found willingness to take some time is that plight of the Philadelphia Phillies. The wonderful ride of success has stopped with a thud, and rather than spend time thinking about the glory days of a franchise, the fans are hysterical with the lack of incoming talent.
In many ways, Philadelphia baseball fans were a lot smarter than the front office, and were worried about the club’s lack of a young foundation well before the team’s management stopped trying to milk another season out of its stars of the past.
For fans of the Eagles, there is going to be a whole lot less of that patience, mostly because Kelly has toyed so much with the roster, and he is already a tenured and experienced guy around here.
But for the Sixers, Flyers and Phillies there is that rare luxury in Philadelphia of having some time to get things fixed first – and then comes the high demand to win it all.
