Ron Hextall has not yet made a decision on the future of Flyers head coach Craig Berube. At his year end press conference, he announced that he’s yet to make a call and that Berube is the head coach.
Hextall on Berube: “As soon as I sort through that I’ll let you know. The process is going on. At this point the decision hasn’t been made.”
— Broad Street Hockey (@BroadStHockey) April 15, 2015
This is … status quo, really. We still don’t know what will happen here. Hextall didn’t make any news on the coaching front at all today.
But maybe his lack of a vote of confidence is actually the news. You’d think that if Berube were going to keep his job, or at least if he were likely to keep his job, Hextall would have said as much to stomp down the rumors. The fact that Hextall didn’t say much of anything aside from “Craig will be the first to know when we make a decision” shouldn’t exactly be comforting to Berube.
But this is going to drag on a little bit longer while Hextall mulls it over. Or at least until he waits to see the other coaches that hit the market…
The issues with this team go deeper than just the coach, of course. Berube inherited a flawed team, and the Flyers’ lack of success the last two seasons is not on solely his back. In fact, he deservedly earned votes for the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year last season after his team recovered from an early season slide and took the eventual Eastern Conference champion New York Rangers for a ride in the first round of the playoffs. Berube was deft at making adjustments on the fly, made decent-enough personnel decisions, seemed to have a good system in place, and said all the right things.
But that all changed this year. Again, this team’s issues are not his fault. But he exacerbated them with head-shaking personnel moves, punishing players with healthy scratches and lineup decisions without any apparent rhyme or reason, and pissing off at least two players (including the arguable team MVP, Steve Mason) to the point where it came out in public.
Is Berube the guy to be trusted to carry this team into the future after everything that’s gone on this year? It still feels like he’s not. But it also feels like Ron Hextall isn’t sure about that just yet … one way or the other.
