Paul Holmgren, in addition to having a successful career as a player for the Philadelphia Flyers, also served as their general manager (GM) from 2006-2014. If he gives your opinion on both the positives and negatives of his tenure as GM, where should he stand on the Flyers issue?
What Holmgren Does Well
After former GM Bob Clarke resigned following a disastrous start to the 2006-07 season, Holmgren was thrust into a difficult position. Ultimately finishing with the worst record in the league despite making the playoffs every season from 1994 to 2006, he was faced with two choices: he could let his core rebuild or show his faith in his players and build around them. Ultimately choosing the latter, he ushered in an exciting era of Flyers hockey.
Despite finishing with the worst record in the league, the Flyers were only taken in the second round when the class prize was one of the best American players in NHL history, winger Patrick Kane. Even with that bad luck, Holmgren built his team around top players Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, and Simon Gagne—and he was very successful in doing so.
In the 2007 offseason, Holmgren did not miss a single game. He traded one recent first-round pick for Scott Hartnell and Kimmo Timonen, quickly improving his top six and acquiring one of the best defensemen in franchise history. However, he did not stop there. Signing the biggest fish in free agency, Danny Briere, to an eight-year contract, Holmgren rebuilt the Flyers' roster—they were instantly shot into contention.
Both Carter and Richards became stars in 2007-08, and Briere was a valuable part of the offense. The Orange and Black topped the postseason with 95 points compared to 56 from last season, completely flipping the script. In the playoffs, they continued their amazing run that led them to the Eastern Conference Final. A team led by several young players, the Flyers look like a team that could contend for years to come.
The Flyers made the playoffs again in 2009, and that's when they started to see the development of young Claude Giroux in their lineup. He was one of their best players in the postseason as a 21-year-old rookie, but it wasn't enough to get back to where they were last season. After that, the team's run to the Stanley Cup Finals took place, thanks to the splash of acquiring future Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger.
The Orange and Black made the playoffs on the final day of the 2009–10 regular season, finishing as the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference. Overcoming the New Jersey Devils, a 3-0 series deficit to the Boston Bruins, and a hungry Montreal Canadiens team, the Flyers returned to the finals for the first time since 1997. series, it was an amazing run that made hockey in Philadelphia interesting again.
The Flyers did not return to the Stanley Cup Finals, but did make the playoffs in Holmgren's final three seasons as GM. He failed to win the championship, but he turned a bad situation into a successful career. With a 307-234-73 record (.559 hitting percentage) and six playoff appearances in eight seasons, Holmgren excelled with the hand he was dealt. He is aggressive when needed and a winner in most of his careers from a value perspective, that deserves some praise.
Downsides of Holmgren's Approach
It was certainly impressive that Holmgren and the Flyers had such a quick turnaround after 2006-07, but that may have been his sign of a rebuild. Instead, he retooled it—reducing the height of Philadelphia. Trying to find a quick fix to a number of issues including not having a deep enough prospect pool, the result was a few successful seasons and the least successful hockey decade in team history after that.
In the end, even Holmgren's best Flyers teams weren't good enough to compete with the juggernauts at the time. This started in 2008 after the season when the Orange and Black faced a young Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in the Eastern Conference Finals. Philadelphia had a 47.9 Corsi percentage (CF%), a 44.1 expected goals percentage (xGF%), and was outscored 14-5 at even strength in its series with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Obviously, the two teams weren't very close—they grew apart over time, and Pittsburgh won the Stanley Cup in 2009 thanks in part to a first-round win against the Flyers.
In the Flyers' appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2010, they weren't as realistic a team as the Blackhawks. Not only is that Chicago's roster the most on paper in the three championships they won from 2010-2015, but they also played against Philadelphia. With 47.5 CF%, 48.9 xGF%, and being outscored 20-16 at even strength, it's clear that the better team won.
We can always look back and wonder if a few things have changed, but the truth is that the Flyers didn't have the talent needed to win the Stanley Cup—they had a worse xGF% than their opponent in all but one of their playoff series from 2008-2010. They've had a couple of good runs, but it's great that everything went so smoothly in the first place. Since advancing to the Finals, it's been a downgrade for the Orange and Black even with the emergence of Giroux in 2010-11 and the team's best regular season record since 2002-03. Swept in the second round by the Bruins, they still fell short of being in the conversation with the NHL's best.
After that sweep, that's when Holmgren's path got weird. Just when Giroux started to blossom into something, that's when Holmgren decided to completely change the lineup around him. In retrospect, maybe he should have gone for a rising star—Pronger and Timonen, the Flyers' top two defensemen, were both in their mid-30s entering the 2011-12 season. Instead of giving Giroux a team to win with, he chose to downsize his roster instead of improving it.
Trading Richards and Carter for a stacked package that included Jakub Voracek, Sean Couturier, Brayden Schenn, and Wayne Simmonds, you'd probably think Holmgren won the job on paper. However, the Flyers had a small window to win a Stanley Cup that completely disappeared the second the deal was made. With more cap space, Holmgren signed goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov to a nine-year, $51 million contract to upgrade from rookie netminder Sergei Bobrovsky—we'll come back to this later.
Related: The 7 Richest Flyers Contracts in Franchise History
While the Flyers were a great team in 2011-12, they suffered a loss that ended any championship hopes—Pronger suffered a career-ending injury. Giroux finished fourth in the Hart Trophy voting and scored 14 points in six games in the first round of the postseason against the Penguins, but it was just enough to delay their inevitable exit—they fell to the Devils in five contests.
After that playoff game, everything fell apart for the franchise. Their short window of opportunity quickly passed, with only three of their defensemen (Pronger and Matt Carle) with a good relative xGF% (xGF% Rel) in 2011-12 not playing another game for Philadelphia. Despite the growth of players like Voracek and Simmonds the next season, Giroux couldn't cope with some of the worst goalies in the league led by Bryzgalov who was bought that first season—Bobrovsky, who was traded to make room. won the Vezina Trophy.
The 2013-14 season was Holmgren's last as GM before becoming President and then General Counsel. He also had one chance to get an indication that the Flyers weren't good enough to compete for a title even with Giroux at his best, but instead he gave Vinny Lecavalier and Andrew MacDonald five- and six-year deals—the former struggled and was traded to the Los Angeles Kings, while the latter was bought out. This aggressive approach may have been influenced by 80-year-old owner Ed Snider, who got the privilege of overseeing the rebuilding project—he sadly passed away in 2016. Regardless of who started this path, it did not set the Flyers up for future success.
Instead of being a great team at this point, the Flyers were very small. While Holmgren was gone in 2014-15, his impact was still felt. Philadelphia lacked depth, had no true starting defensemen on their roster, and had one of the worst bullpens in the league. Ron Hextall didn't do a great job as the next GM, but he was put in a difficult position and failed spectacularly. He suffered a lot, but his case was not helped by his predecessor.
While the answer to whether Holmgren was a good or poor GM for the Flyers is subjective, there were undoubtedly good and bad aspects of his tenure. Although he hasn't been a GM in a decade, the impact of his time is still felt today—Briere, who he signed, now serves in his old role.
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