(Kate Frese/Sports Talk Philly)
By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 
Game 82 is upon us and the Flyers will close the 2016-17 season on Sunday night against Carolina. In less than 24 hours, it will officially be the offseason.
In a season that was marred with frustration and little room to make drastic changes, the Flyers took a proverbial step back. After being an inspired team that made a playoff run in 2015-16, they peaked in December and never found the consistency needed to be a playoff team in 2016-17.
This makes the upcoming offseason and subsequent 2017-18 season a crucial one for both GM Ron Hextall and head coach Dave Hakstol, who have to move the Flyers ahead in their progression to contention.
Let’s start with the coaching side. Dave Hakstol is not going anywhere. While he has drawn the ire of Flyers fans with his lineup decisions this season, it remains too soon to admit failure and defeat on a head coach with no NHL experience prior to 2015-16.
That said, coaches typically get a three-year window to prove that their system is embraced and working with the players a team has. In the first couple of seasons, you tend to evaluate talent over coaching. Maybe a certain player just doesn’t fit the system or isn’t cut out for the style a coach desires.
But after three years, you tend to have a good feel on where things are going. That makes the 2017-18 season the most important one yet for Hakstol. He did an admirable job helping the Flyers return to contention and make the playoffs in 2015-16. But with that came expectations, and as the team failed to live up to them, the coach was taking the heat.
Any signs of going in reverse could mean the end of Hakstol after the 2017-18 season. If Hakstol’s system doesn’t equate to success at the NHL level, if the inconsistency remains on special teams and goal scoring, if defensively the Flyers are an atrocity, it comes back to Hakstol this time.
He’ll survive this season because the sample size remains too small and the roster that will be built for contention is still under construction. Which brings us to the GM wearing the construction helmet.
Ron Hextall has done an admirable job essentially the entire way through his tenure as Flyers GM. In times when the Flyers needed to add by subtracting players who were better suited for playoff contenders, Hextall flipped for picks.
The Flyers have placed such a value on picks and scouting amateur talent that they have built one of the better pipelines of prospects in the NHL. And the kids are coming.
Tuesday’s lineup was as much a glimpse of the future as you will find this season. The Flyers dressed two players in their NHL debut, Mike Vecchione and Sam Morin. They had rookies Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny in the game. They had second-year defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere. Anthony Stolarz served as backup goalie. If not for illness, Jordan Weal would have also been on the ice. Even when you lump in Sean Couturier and Brayden Schenn, who despite being seasoned NHL veterans are still part of the 25-and-under club, the Flyers had nine players age 25 or younger on the active roster.
Welcome to the future.
And this is only the beginning. Morin figures to be a full-time NHLer next season. Oskar Lindblom, Travis Sanheim and Philippe Myers are making a lot of noise and have potential to join the NHL next season as well. Even more kids are coming.
Hextall’s big task this offseason isn’t necessarily about improving the Flyers on paper in free agency. For Hextall, this offseason will be about making a critical decision for the organization — do you continue to bring back players like Chris VandeVelde, Michael Del Zotto and Nick Schultz for security purposes, or do you take a chance and essentially open up spots for prospects in July?
July is early to make such a decision, which is why in previous years the Flyers kept players around just in case a prospect needed another season in juniors or the minors. But the Flyers are starting to lose that luxury. As the kids get closer to being ready, the Flyers have no cap room to make such a drastic move of calling them up because of the security blanket from re-signing dead-weight players.
Hextall doesn’t need to make the Flyers pipeline better this offseason. He has to find a way to move it along. He’ll also have a wealth of draft picks to add to the system again, so keeping the pipeline stocked shouldn’t be a problem either.
The Flyers GM has preached patience, but insisted that the Flyers blueprint still revolves around the current core. If it does, then this is the offseason to take strides and start finding places on the roster for players who are approaching NHL ready status.
This week has provided a first look at that. Hopefully, for Hextall and Hakstol, next season will be much more than a three-game sample and breed more success as well.
