from Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe,

All in all, it’s a one-of-a-kind hybrid overhaul, one that now has Flyers president Paul Holmgren and his boss, Spectacor CEO Dave Scott, sifting through candidates to replace Hextall — the guy who came in and mopped up the salary cap mess that Holmgren created during his choppy tour in the GM’s seat.

Scott has implored Holmgren to look outside the organization, which thus far has bubbled up the names Ron Francis, Steve Yzerman, and Chuck Fletcher, with Fletcher, ex- of Harvard and former Wild GM, considered the front-runner.

“I want to spend to the cap,” Scott told the Philly media. “I want to have the best team we can have here.”...

Philly is a unique market. Decades later, a sizable portion of the fan base still embraces the Broad Street Bullies ethos, eagerly hoping that a river of blood returns and rebrands the franchise in the image of Dave Schultz and Bobby Clarke. Delusional. In today’s 31-team NHL, maybe half the working help has never been in a fight and much of the other half views it as an all-but-useless novelty item.

The new GM, who will have the call on whether Hakstol remains in place, will be charged with winning over the remaining Bully-heads. How to do that? Wins, of course. More speed. More skill.

And above all, finding a bona fide goaltender, like, say, that Sergei Bobrovsky fellow, now a pending UFA in Columbus, where the Flyers traded him six years ago for three draft picks that proved to be a pocketful of lint. Post-Bobrovsky, the Flyers moved on to their Ilya Bryzgalov-Steve Mason-Ray Emery era of goaltending — a chain collision of stoppers that ultimately claimed Hextall in the pileup.

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