And now, the focus turns to the Philadelphia Flyers’ search for their president of hockey operations.

Technically, there are two positions yet to be finalized in the Philadelphia front office — general manager and the newly distinct president of hockey ops role. But it’s the latter role that is truly open, given Daniel Briere’s current status as interim GM. Interviews have already begun for the PoHO role, and my understanding is that the Flyers are aiming to have their president of hockey operations (and full-time GM) positions filled by early May at the latest.

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But what exactly are the Flyers looking for in a president of hockey operations? What should they be looking for?

In early April, I spoke with new Comcast Spectacor chairman and CEO Dan Hilferty to gain a better understanding of how he envisioned the president of hockey operations role. He’s spearheading the search, along with Valerie Camillo (president and CEO of Spectacor Sports & Entertainment), an outside firm named Modern Executive Solutions and adviser Neil Glasberg, who also was involved in the John Tortorella hiring last summer. Hilferty laid out in general terms his vision for the role, and the qualities he was looking for in candidates.

Now, it’s time to dive a little deeper into the specifics of those qualities, and how the rumored candidates fit (or don’t fit) the bill. There are three boxes in particular that I believe a candidate needs to check for the decision-makers, and one that I believe should also be prioritized. Let’s break them all down.

Experience

When I spoke with Hilferty, he explained that he envisioned the hockey operations decisions largely being driven by a “triumvirate of leadership,” with the yet-to-be-named president of hockey operations as one of the three members of said triumvirate, along with the general manager and head coach John Tortorella.

“My main concern around the hockey ‘Big Three’ — my term — is that they each have compatible, complementary skill sets that allow them to work together to maximize the potential of the brand with our support,” Hilferty said.

The one element very clearly missing from the triumvirate as it stands? Extensive team-building experience.

Tortorella certainly doesn’t lack hockey experience, but he’s a coach — he’s never been entrusted with constructing a team, only providing his input to the person who actually was making the trades and signings and picks. As for the GM, while Briere still holds the interim tag, it’s basically a foregone conclusion that he’ll ultimately get the job.

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Briere is universally viewed within NHL circles as a sharp hockey mind with the potential to make an excellent general manager. But in terms of on-the-ground experience in the role? Not only has Briere never been an NHL GM before — on its own a concern — but he also lacks extensive time in major decision-making roles in an NHL front office. Briere basically just has two seasons as a “special assistant to the GM” and that’s it. No time as a director of scouting or director of player personnel or AGM in charge of the AHL club. He was just a voice in the room — an important voice, to be sure, but not one who was in charge of anything.

Daniel Briere is expected to be named Flyers GM. (AP Photo / Matt Rourke)

If Hilferty and the Flyers do truly want a president of hockey operations that brings a complementary skill set, it would make sense to target people who bring the extensive NHL front office experience that Briere (and Tortorella) lack.

To be clear, Briere will be running the show regardless of who is hired. This will not be like the Phillies’ front office — where Sam Fuld is the general manager but everyone knows that president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski is really making the final decisions on the roster — or the Sixers (Daryl Morey and Elton Brand). That said, Briere could certainly use a sounding board within the triumvirate who can guide him on the more logistical and strategic aspects of the job — the art of negotiating trades or dealing with agents, for example. There would be a real benefit to bringing in a PoHO who has managed NHL clubs successfully in the past — or at least had real power in NHL organizations.

Hilferty acknowledged that he wanted his president of hockey operations to be experienced earlier this month, but he stopped short of confirming that he’ll be looking for someone with prior GM experience.

“Certainly, they have to have NHL experience,” he said. “Certainly they have to have NHL relationships. Certainly have to have a level of business acumen. Certainly they have to be articulate, great communicators. But I’m not pigeonholing that position to someone who you said, (needs) front office experience or experience as assistant GM or other capacity. I’m looking for the third piece that is added into the (group so) that the three of them lead us to, as I said, competing on a regular basis to win Stanley Cups.”

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Still, all things being equal, I suspect they see value in adding a veteran NHL executive to the mix. It would certainly help on the “NHL relationships” front. It would provide Briere with a mentor. And it would ensure that Comcast Spectacor has someone in the room able to quickly tell if Briere might be in over his head in a general managing role.

Strong communicator

Don’t disregard the importance of this one. Hilferty doesn’t seem to want a president of hockey operations who will fade into the background. He wants a PoHO that will be active in driving the organization’s preferred message to the fans.

“We really want to make sure we connect in this new era in a stronger way with our sponsors, our season ticket holders, and fan base in general,” Hilferty said. “This journey we’re about to go on, we want people to get excited about it, because they’re getting believable, honest assessments of where we are. The president will play a key role in delivering that narrative to the public.”

Hilferty made sure to note that they feel Briere is a polished communicator as well, and the president of hockey operations won’t supersede him in that regard. But Comcast Spectacor very much seems to envision the PoHO job to be a public-facing one — not just to the fans, but to corporate partners as well. They’re going to want a strong communicator, someone with the ability to connect and then successfully articulate an organizational philosophy.

This is where previous front office experience can help. Anyone who served as an NHL GM for an extended period of time has extensive practice speaking with the media and justifying why moves were (or were not) made. Now, in fairness, not all NHL GMs qualify as expert communicators. But at the very least, there would be hundreds of hours of news conference footage to use to judge a past general manager’s acumen in that area.

That said, one doesn’t need to have GM experience to be a stellar communicator. Candidates who spent time as analysts on television, for example, might qualify. And surely there are AGMs who probably were superior talkers to the GMs above them; they just never got the opportunity to show it.

Regardless, I believe they’ll be looking for someone they can trust to stay on brand and avoid public gaffes like the ones that Chuck Fletcher and Dave Scott fell into at times over the past few years, such as the infamous “aggressive retool” promise and Fletcher’s cringeworthy contention that a Flyers club that had just lost 10 straight games was still just five points out of a playoff spot.

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Smart hockey mind

This one really should go without saying. If the president of hockey operations is going to be part of the triumvirate and have real power in driving the team-building direction, that person better know hockey extremely well.

Comcast Spectacor needs to strike a delicate balance here. They need to identify someone with the hockey knowledge and evaluation skills necessary to both earn Tortorella’s trust and respect, and legitimately help Briere in terms of making his final roster decisions. However, assuming that they do indeed want Briere to be the one in the triumvirate with the most power — and by all accounts, that does seem like it’s what Comcast wants — then they need to ensure that this smart hockey mind is willing to accept being more of a strong voice in the room rather than the person calling the shots. There’s a real risk that an experienced, accomplished PoHO could — by nature of an ego built up over decades in hockey authority — try to overstep boundaries with regard to Briere.

In other words, the Flyers need to hire someone who is very smart from a hockey perspective — but also modest enough to accept that while they do have power, they’re not the general manager. Otherwise, you risk a power struggle between the three heads of the triumvirate, and the unwelcome return of Flyers front office dysfunction.

A former GM would have the most extensive track record proving his hockey acumen, but secondary front-office executives or those within the game in other ways could also check this box. Basically, if you’re going to hire someone with past NHL GM experience, make sure it’s one that actually built good teams. If it’s not, make sure that they bring some sort of unique hockey expertise to the table.

Outside perspective

In fairness, this one is more a box that I believe the Flyers should try to check — not necessarily one that they view as essential.

From my perspective, however, the Flyers would benefit significantly from a president of hockey operations that is outside of the traditional Flyers orbit.

Look at Tortorella, for instance. It remains to be seen if his coaching tenure as a whole in Philadelphia will be viewed as a success. But he has already provided an extremely valuable service. Coming in as an outsider, he quickly realized what far too many people within the organization obstinately refused to acknowledge: that the team was in desperate need of a full-fledged pivot to a rebuild mentality. So Torts hammered that narrative home every chance he got in his public comments, and slowly but surely, the rest of the organization — namely, ownership — came around. I have a strong suspicion that without Tortorella coming in and screaming from the heavens that the emperor truly did have no clothes, the Flyers might be trying to sell the delusion this summer that they just need Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson back and then everything will be fine.

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Sometimes, when you’re “in the club,” you’re just too close to the situation to see how bad things have gotten. That’s when an outsider helps in a big way.

It’s needed in their team-building approach, too.

Over the past few seasons, we’ve seen the limitations of trying to build a team “the Flyers way” in the cap era — quick fixes prioritized over long-term planning, toughness over skill, attitude over asset management. Smart teams are taking advantage of accumulated cap space to get Devon Toews for two second-round picks, or successfully both buying low and selling high on Tony DeAngelo over the course of 12 months. The Flyers, in the meantime, were trading their high picks to swap out Shayne Gostisbehere (who one of those smart teams nabbed for a mere third-round pick at the deadline last month) and replacing him with Rasmus Ristolainen and DeAngelo for double the cap spend. There’s a serious organizational problem in terms of how the Flyers construct their rosters, and what characteristics they prioritize.

The president of hockey operations ideally would bring a fresh perspective. Not one beholden to the Flyers’ ghosts of the past, both real — in terms of the old guard — and imagined (the belief that the Flyers have to play a certain way to stay “the Flyers”). It’s important to add a person to the triumvirate who won’t feel that outside pressure, and who will come with little risk of being unduly influenced by those on the outside of the trio to push roster construction in a “traditional” direction.

Briere, of course, is a former Flyer, and — for all his strengths — brings those connections and that baggage. Tortorella, while certainly an outsider, is also a traditionalist, and presumably is very much on board with the concept of Flyers toughness, at the very least. Perhaps the president of hockey operations should bring a different perspective — that led to success elsewhere — to balance all of that out.

How do the candidates measure up?

So if those are our four wishlist items, how exactly do the top rumored candidates for the position grade out?

Ray Shero

It’s fair to say that there’s been more industry smoke around Ray Shero than any other option for the Flyers’ PoHO position over the past month.

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I’ve heard conflicting things. Some within the game seem to believe it’s his job to lose, with talk of feelers already being put out regarding who Shero would want to bring into the front office to support Briere. Others speak as though Shero’s name is more a product of outsiders connecting the dots on their own and less based on true inside information. Regardless, I’ve heard enough to strongly suspect that he’s at the very least seriously in the mix for the role.

Shero does check many of our boxes. He’s extremely experienced, having spent 13 years as an NHL general manager with Pittsburgh and New Jersey. He’s had success in that role as well, particularly during his first GM run with the Penguins when he built the 2009 Stanley Cup champions. Some might argue that Shero was gifted Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and while that’s true, he still had to build a quality club around those two stars, and he succeeded, with the Penguins averaging 106.7 standings points per year during his tenure. He’s also comfortable in front of the media, a byproduct of his years in charge of one of the league’s highest-profile teams.

But then there’s the obvious Flyers connection — he’s the son of Fred Shero. Yes, that Fred Shero — the only head coach to win the Stanley Cup with the Flyers. Hard to get a more “traditional Flyers connection” than that.

In fairness, it’s not like Shero came up in the organization, so he would be an outsider in a sense. It’s very possible that the connection here will be one more of public perception of spiritual nepotism than actually an example of the Flyers just hiring one of their own yet again.

But would Shero feel beholden to past interpretations of how the Flyers need to be built and need to be run, due to his direct familiarity with the club’s Broad Street Bullies history? Would he prove to be less Comcast’s eyes and ears in the front office and more the stealth voice of the old guard? It’s a reasonable worry, and one that would need to be satisfactorily addressed in both the interview process and to the hockey world at large.

Doug Wilson was the GM in San Jose for 18 seasons. (Justin K. Aller / Getty Images)

Doug Wilson

There’s a lot about this option that makes sense.

Doug Wilson was a very successful general manager for years in San Jose, building a Western Conference juggernaut that basically won everything except the Stanley Cup, coming up two games short of that goal in 2016. He resigned due to medical issues in 2022, but Elliotte Friedman recently reported on his 32 Thoughts podcast that Wilson is feeling much better now and is ready to throw his hat back into the ring for NHL front office positions again.

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In theory, Wilson checks every box. He’s as experienced as it gets, serving as an NHL GM for 18 seasons. His hockey knowledge is proven out by his team’s .603 points percentage over the course of his tenure (98.9 average points per season). He has extensive practice dealing with the media, and served as executive VP of hockey operations in San Jose in addition to his GM duties, hinting that he has experience on the business side, too. He would qualify as a true outsider with no glaring Flyers connections. And given his past medical issues, it might make all the sense in the world for Wilson to come back into hockey in a lower-stress role than a full-fledged GM job, cutting down on the likelihood that he would encroach into Briere’s territory.

It’s possible that the PoHO job could be more taxing than Wilson wants to take on right now. But he’s an accomplished outsider and a well-respected hockey mind with the sole blemish on his resume being his lack of a Cup ring.

Scott Mellanby

Scott Mellanby’s name has been tossed around for weeks, dating back to Fletcher’s ouster in March. The Fourth Period’s Anthony DiMarco reported last week as well that Mellanby would be interviewed for the position, and it appears he’s in the mix.

At one point, Mellanby was viewed as the heir apparent to Marc Bergevin in Montreal. Instead, Mellanby resigned on Nov. 27, 2021 — just a day before Bergevin was relieved of his GM duties. Pierre LeBrun reported at the time that Mellanby resigned after it became clear that he would not ultimately be succeeding Bergevin, and he would pop up again as a senior adviser in St. Louis the following summer, where he remains.

Mellanby has never been an NHL GM. But he does have extensive NHL front office experience spending 10 seasons with the Canadiens and serving in multiple positions, from director of player personnel to AGM to GM of their minor league affiliate. He also apprenticed for two years under Mike Gillis in Vancouver during the height of the Sedin-era Canucks, and spent two years as an assistant coach with the Blues. So Mellanby does have experience — just not in the top job.

He also does have the “former Flyer” tag, as he was drafted by the club in 1984 and spent five seasons in Philadelphia. But Mellanby also played for four other teams (he’s probably best remembered leaguewide as a Florida Panther) and has been out of the Flyers’ orbit since retiring and moving into management. It’s fair to wonder if Mellanby would be better served in a GM position than a PoHO role, and it’s naturally more difficult to judge the credentials of an assistant GM compared to one with experience making the final decisions. But there’s a case to be made that Mellanby would bring a fresh approach, and that he comes with enough experience to be a great deal of help to Briere without running the risk of overshadowing him.

Dave Poulin

Another name that has been rumored for quite a while as being on the radar, Dave Poulin will also be getting an interview, according to DiMarco.

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If you’re hoping for a PoHO candidate that qualifies as an outsider, that’s not Poulin, who was the team’s captain through the majority of the 1980s. But his post-playing career hasn’t been Flyers-centric — he spent a decade as head coach at the University of Notre Dame, worked for the Anaheim Ducks as a scout, and then spent five seasons in the Toronto Maple Leafs front office before moving into a television analyst role with TSN.

In truth, it’s that element of his resume that is most interesting. If the Flyers are prioritizing a strong, intelligent communicator as their president of hockey ops, Poulin is that. He’ll almost certainly be able to articulate the organization’s preferred message in clear, concise terms, and his time in the Leafs organization means that he’s not lacking front-office experience, even if it does pale in comparison to some of the other candidates.

Poulin does not check the outsider box — he’s the opposite of that. But in terms of communication skills and hockey knowledge, he fits the bill.

(Photo of Ray Shero: Andy Marlin / NHLI via Getty Images)

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