Bob Clarke Just Turned Back into Bobby Clarke and BURIED Ron Hextall
It hasn’t been a spectacular year for the Flyers who already fired their head coach and are on a five game losing streak. The crop of prospects who were supposed to bring the Flyers back into a contender have mostly not worked out. A good portion of that blame goes to former Flyers general manager Ron Hextall who ran the team from 2014 to 2018 and is now the GM for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Hex may have taken the opportunity to be a GM when the Penguins offered him a job, but he probably took it knowing he’d get some flack from current Flyers executives and fans. And that’s exactly what happened this week.
On the NHL podcast called “The Cam & Strick Podcast” Flyers senior vice president Bob Clarke buried Hextall for his job as general manager of the Flyers. His most damning statement was for Hextall’s decision to draft Nolan Patrick with the 2nd pick in the 2017 draft over rising star Cale Makar on the Colorado Avalanche.
Clarke claimed “We had the second pick in the draft and end up picking Nolan Patrick. None of our scouts wanted Nolan Patrick . . . They wanted Makar . . . Hextall made that choice himself.”
He continued stating “There were other choices that were made at our drafts that we’re paying for. We’ve got two or three first-round picks that are never going to play. That’s why we’re struggling. Hexy made some huge mistakes.”
Reading or hearing his Clarke’s damning statements on Hextall and it’s as if the older and clean-cut Bob Clarke turned back into Bobby Clarke from the 1970s, with his long hair and missing front teeth returning. Some contrarians, most of them Penguins fans, could argue that Clarke and the Flyers organization are trying to pin all the blame for the 2017 draft debacle on Hextall since he’s now working for the enemy. While Hextall has yet to respond to Clarke’s heated comments, it’s unlikely he’ll be returning to Flyers alumni night any time soon.
With Ed Snider no longer with us Bobby Clarke pretty much is the biggest ambassador for the Philadelphia Flyers and whenever he comments on the team the fans will listen. While Philadelphia loves their Flyers, it takes a legitimate Cup contender for them to gain relevance where the Eagles alone have a firm grip on the city’s conscience, and the Flyers just continue to not be that.
And for those who casually watch the Flyers but don’t know that well about the rest of the NHL, Clarke’s comments reveals the the Flyers too can miss out on drafting superstars like the other teams in the city! There are very few things that can cause more pain in sports than passing up on a star player in the draft who would have solved most of your team’s problems and made them relevant. And this isn’t something that haunts you for a year, it’s a bitter pill to swallow that grows and develops for over a decade until it becomes a part of sports lore.
And Nolan Patrick sure ain’t becoming the next Brandon Graham because now he plays for the Las Vegas Golden Knights. So as the calendar turns and the Stanley Cup drought gets closer to a half-century, lets hope current general manager Chuck Fletcher fixes things soon.