from David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News,

Roughly 30 minutes had elapsed since his first season as an NHL coach ended, and Dave Hakstol was not yet ready to reflect. He did not want to talk about the vast number of positives he would take away from Year 1, nor did he want to talk about the lessons that a six-game series against the best team in hockey had taught him. As he sat at a table in a conference room in the bowels of the Wells Fargo Center, he could not yet bring himself to turn his focus to the future.

"I think you use all the information at hand in order to evaluate and look at ways to get better," Hakstol said. "Obviously, this series is the latest information we have, and playoff time is a little different level, but it will be part of the information, for sure, that we use as a staff and as a group to evaluate and look at areas we need to improve on and push forward."

Forward. It's the word that has defined this franchise since it hired Hakstol last summer. This season was never supposed to be about 2016. To anybody outside of the organization, the playoff series that ended Sunday with a 1-0 loss to the Capitals was little more than an entertaining diversion. Really, we learned as much by what the Flyers failed to accomplish as we would have had they fluked their way into the second round. They lost, and that's something. But what it told us about them is the important thing.

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