If you've followed the Flyers with even just a moderate interest over the last few seasons, you likely know the plan GM Ron Hextall is taking to building a championship-caliber team.
Patience, patience, patience.
In a sport like hockey, similarly to football and basketball, there are times when a big move here and there whether by trade or free agency is the big move that puts a team over the top and makes them one to be reckoned with as the playoffs approach. But most teams that hoist the Stanley Cup are a lot like the teams that get to claim the Commissioner's Trophy in Major League Baseball as World Series champions, a team built on homegrown talent from the stages of drafting to the culmination of a title.
The Kansas City Royals snapped a 30-year championship drought in 2015 with a World Series championship, and the Flyers have teamed up with some local connections in Kansas City to form an interesting partnership built on common ground.
It started with the Flyers trip to Arizona last March, which put the Flyers in the same area as the Royals were for spring training. Royals assistant GM J.J. Picollo is a Cherry Hill, NJ native and grew up a Flyers fan. The partnership started as a simple invite to use the Royals spring training facility if Flyers players were looking for a way to continue to work out.
"Every spring training I look at the Coyotes schedule to see if the Flyers are in town, so this year the Flyers were in town during spring training," Picollo said to Adam Kimelman of NHL.com. "I said, 'I'm going to try to get in touch with Ron Hextall and just offer our gym, our facility.' I don't know what their routines are on the road, but if they needed a place to work out if they wanted, they're more than welcome to come use our place.
"And I wanted to see if I could sit down with them and talk about development philosophies. There's a lot of similarities between the two sports, and it's always interesting to hear from somebody from another sport."
Hextall accepted the invite and sent John Riley and Kjell Samuelsson, the two player development coaches that led Flyers Development Camp last week, to compare the development process.
In the end, the comparisons proved to be even more similar than previously imagined. From the potential language barriers that foreign players face to mastering the fundamentals of the game, the two sides came away with a wealth of knowledge within a similar mindset.
"The first morning we were there, we watched 40 professional baseball players work on rounding first base for 20 minutes," Riley said. "And then all of the little drills they do in spring training and how that can translate to teaching fundamentals in hockey. You want to make sure in the development process, you don't overlook those things."
"We have kids from Italy now, but it's mostly Latin America," Picollo said. "How do they integrate Russians? How do they integrate guys from the Netherlands? It's the communication. How do you communicate on the ice, moving, when you guys aren't speaking the same language?
"It turned into a really neat experience. I know on my part it was, and John and I have continued to keep in touch. I know we will over time. Was a fun thing to do."
Kevin Durso is an editor for Sports Talk Philly. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
