New Flyers general manager Ron Hextall takes thinly veiled shot at perpetually rebuilding team

While being introduced as the new general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers, executive and former NHL goaltender Ron Hextall discussed the Flyers' eschewal of the bottom-out rebuild over the past generation, and took a thinly-veiled shot at a perpetually rebuilding team that sounds an awful lot like the Edmonton Oilers.

 Here are Hextall's comments in full, per Inside Sports host Reid Wilkins:

It's hard to do. If you think winning a Stanley Cup is easy, I've got news for you. And the one thing I mentioned, Philadelphia's not sitting there waiting for y'know number one picks year after year after year, y'know for five years. I mean it's the easy way to go and there's no guarantees of winning a Cup then - but to maintain something for 25 years or 30 years, which has been done here, it's hard to do. 

You take a look at the franchises around the league that have been as successful as this one, probably in all pro-sports, and there's not many. So it's a hard thing to do. [The Flyers] went to the final in 2010, we lost in Game 7 in 87, we lost in the finals in 97, I mean, if you look at the track record other than maybe not winning the big one, which again, there's 30 teams out there...

And right now there's a team, I won't mention any names, there's a team out there just collecting number one picks right now. Yeah they're going to be a pretty good team in three or four years, but ask their fans if they've had a fun last seven or eight years. The culture of winning is nothing to be embarrassed about, we should all be damn proud of this organization and how successful they've been."

That's some cold-blooded criticism from Hextall. Either he's not over the disappointment of 1987 (even though he at least won the Conn Smythe), or maybe when he sees the Oilers logo he sees Chris Chelios' face. 

Interestingly, Hextall isn't the only new NHL general manager to suggest that the perpetual rebuilding model is bad business. Flames general manager Brad Treliving shared a similar sentiment this week per NHL.com: "We have to introduce some young players into our program, add some young assets, but the idea that we're going to sit here for 10 years and wait for players to get older after we draft them is … we want to move it along."

Is tanking going out of the style in the NHL? And only a single season removed from Erie Otters' phenom Connor McDavid's draft year?