But van Riemsdyk sustained a lower-body injury in the second game of the season and missed six weeks. The power play (26th, 15.7 percent) and penalty kill (30th, 70.9 percent) are among the worst in the NHL. They're allowing 3.58 goals per game, third-most in the League, and have started five goaltenders, an NHL high.
And younger players expected to take the next step in their development, among them forwards Travis Konecny, 21, and Nolan Patrick, 20, and defensemen Provorov, 21, and Travis Sanheim, 22, have been inconsistent.
"The goaltending didn't go as well as I hoped, the special teams didn't go as well as I hoped, the young players didn't take a step as I hoped," Hextall said.
Though Holmgren and Dave Scott, chairman of Comcast Spectacor, the company that owns the Flyers, lauded Hextall for the job he did building a large base of prospects, Hextall's unwillingness to trade those future assets for help in the present was one of the philosophical differences.
"That was a big question," Scott said Tuesday. "What can we do now, today, to make the team better now, not two years or three years from now?"