For Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher, a philosophical shift | Sam Donnellon

As you watch Chuck Fletcher in his second go-around as an NHL general manager, a natural thought is this:

What would Ron Hextall do differently if given a second chance to construct and oversee a team?

Because there’s been a philosophical shift for Fletcher from Minnesota to here. First in hiring Alain Vigneault as his head coach, and this week, adding not one but two former head coaches — Michel Therrien and Mike Yeo — to Vigneault’s staff.

No assistant or AHL coach promoted to head coach this time, despite the impressive job Scott Gordon did with the Flyers this season amid an extremely difficult situation. Fletcher did that twice in Minnesota, first promoting Todd Richards and replacing him two years later with Yeo.

Both were first-time NHL head coaches.

“It’s harder to predict the future of unproven coaches,” Fletcher said after introducing the well-traveled and NHL-seasoned Vigneault to the media last month. “... It’s much easier to predict the future performance of proven coaches. That’s part of it. …

"Sometimes, you can overthink things, you can interview a lot of people and try to maybe find the next diamond in the rough. Sometimes, you can. More often, it doesn’t work when you go the unproven route.”

It might have cost Hextall his job, first hiring Dave Hakstol out of college and then sticking with him despite the team’s wild ebbs and flows during his tenure.

Hextall repeatedly mentioned the “culture” Hakstol had instilled at North Dakota. You wonder if he would be less impressed by that if, or when, he gets another chance to be a GM.

At 37, Yeo was the youngest head coach in the NHL when Fletcher hired him out of the AHL to be his head coach in 2011.

An assistant under Therrien when he was Pittsburgh’s head coach in 2006, Yeo had impressed Fletcher, the Penguins’ assistant general manager at the time. He had never been an NHL coach, however, and the road in Minnesota was bumpy, as firing rumors swirled in almost every season Yeo was there until he eventually was let go in February 2016.

His ride was no less bumpy in St. Louis, where he was replaced early last season by Craig Berube. (The Blues turned their season around and are headed to the Western Conference Final.)

But Yeo was a trusted and respected assistant in Pittsburgh, and his intensity — which at one point threatened his health — appears to be exactly what Fletcher and Vigneault were looking for in their assistants, in changing what Fletcher has termed “the mind-set” of the current Flyers.

Therrien’s teams have won 375 of the 756 games he has coached in the NHL which, yes, is less than half. Before that, he was a mostly successful AHL coach, and way before that, after his minor-league playing career ended, he was for a short time a telephone lineman — and a bodyguard for Quebec singer Roch Voisine. He coached the Penguins to the Cup Final in 2008 and reached the conference final with Montreal in 2014.

Bad cop is probably too extreme a term for Yeo. But to hear Vigneault on a conference call Wednesday, Yeo will be a sergeant.

“This is about giving our players coaching,” Vigneault said. “This is about giving our players direction. Both guys, they’ve been head coaches before. Nobody understands more of what’s needed from an assistant than a head coach.

"They understand their role. They know that part of being assistant obviously is being closer with the players. You have to have an open mind about hearing their concerns, and they bring different situations to me. It’s my job as the head coach sometimes to handle the big situation.”

“It’s hard to get these guys,” Fletcher had said of Vigneault that day last month. "There are successful coaches coming from every area of hockey. Some come out of college. Some come out of the minor leagues. Some come out of junior.

"But when you look at some of these proven high-end guys, you have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to get. And there’s not a lot of guessing. They have a proven track record of what they’ve done well.

"I think it’s such a great commodity to get."

Look up north. Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello saw a Stanley Cup-champion coach inexplicably spring free. In one season, Fletcher said, despite the Islanders’ losing arguably their best player and beginning the season with a dubious-looking goaltending tandem, Barry Trotz flipped the narrative there.

“We’re all close,” the new Flyers GM said. “And confidence and momentum early in the season can really lead to great things. That’s why the most important time will be our training camp. And we’ll be ready to go.”