In his first news conference as interim general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers, Daniel Brière already proved willing to utter the one simple word that was anathema to his predecessor, Chuck Fletcher.
Rebuild.
“I don’t think this is a quick fix. That’s my belief and that’s why I’m not afraid to use the word rebuild,” he said on Sunday morning.
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Fletcher, of course, long seemed terrified of it, instead substituting other, more nebulous words. He vowed in January 2022 that the team was not rebuilding, but “aggressively retooling,” a description that dogged him for the remainder of his tenure. “Well, we’re retooling, Charlie,” he responded after an underwhelming first day of free agency six months later, highlighted by the decision to pass on actively pursuing Johnny Gaudreau. And even in late February, just days before his tenure would come to an end, he blanched at the specific word.
“I just … it’s terminology,” Fletcher said, before launching into a description that sure sounded like a classic rebuild.
Some have argued, as Fletcher did, that the specific terminology didn’t really matter. But words do matter — particularly for a fan base that had been sold overly optimistic portrayals of their team’s situation for years. It was the pandemic that ruined 2020-21, they were told. A quick fix was on the horizon, they were twice peddled. “We’re still just five points out of a playoff spot,” they were asked to swallow in the immediate wake of a 10-game losing streak. The result was a complete loss of Fletcher’s credibility within the fan base, in turn extending to the organization as a whole.
Full honesty was needed. The person in charge needed to bluntly acknowledge that the team’s window for contention wouldn’t magically reopen in the next few years, that more valuable assets wouldn’t be shipped out to acquire veteran band-aids, and most importantly, that the front office fully understood just how weak the Flyers’ current talent pool remains, and how much work it will take to replenish it to the point that the team can be relevant again.
Brière, better than Fletcher ever did, articulated on his first try Sunday morning a clear-cut, easy-to-parse vision: it’s a rebuild, yes, but not a fire sale.
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“We have to be careful, and I want to make sure that rebuild doesn’t mean fire sale. There’s a big difference between the two. I want to make that clear,” he said. “We’re not going to get rid of everybody. We have some good players here.”
In Fletcher’s defense, he did try by the end to communicate a similar message. And there were reasons beyond pure obstinance that kept him from using the “rebuild” word. For starters, I believe for quite a long time, Comcast Spectacor simply wouldn’t let him; their pivot toward accepting a full rebuild mentality is a relatively recent shift. Second, Fletcher likely knew on some level that he wouldn’t be tasked with engineering a rebuild, so publicly advocating for one would, in a sense, serve as Fletcher pushing for his own removal. And finally, I suspect Fletcher did honestly believe that the word “rebuild” came with connotations of what the Chicago Blackhawks did last summer, jettisoning everything that wasn’t nailed down — even young pieces like 24-year-old Alex DeBrincat and 21-year-old Kirby Dach — in an attempt to tank for Connor Bedard in the 2023 NHL Draft.
Brière, even in his interim status, doesn’t have those same constraints or rhetorical concerns.
And while Brière has yet to secure the full-time GM position, he made it abundantly clear on Sunday that he wants the job.
“Well, I have the GM part in my title, so that’s kind of what I’m going with at this point,” Brière sid. “I haven’t really thought about president (of hockey operations). At this point, I probably see myself as the GM, I would say, but I would be open to whatever (Comcast Spectacor chairman) Dave (Scott) and (Comcast Spectacor CEO) Dan (Hilferty) would see fit. It really doesn’t matter to me.”
Per multiple team sources, he’s the heavy favorite to get it.
Brière checks a number of boxes for ownership, after all. First, he has a strong working relationship with John Tortorella, who the organization very much wants to keep. Second, he’s viewed both internally and externally as an intelligent hockey mind — he made it to the final round of interviews for the GM position in Montreal just last year. And finally, he has a strong relationship with the business side of the organization, having been their hire first to manage the Maine Mariners of the ECHL.
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He certainly spoke like a person planning to approach his status as the interim GM as if he’ll ultimately be nabbing the full-time job.
“Obviously, I know a lot of the players, but I’ll have the chance to maybe dive a little deeper with his coaching staff and the people upstairs around me,” Brière said. “Have deeper discussions on evaluating players and what the next few steps moving forward.”
Combine that with his multiple nods to Dave Scott and Dan Hilferty — a tacit acknowledgement that the latter’s importance in the hiring process is very real just months after being hired as CEO — and it sure played as Brière using his first news conference as an unofficial extension of a job interview, which was even more obvious when Brière was asked to comment on his lack of NHL front office experience, given that he only was made an official member of the Philadelphia front office a little over a year ago when he was named special assistant to the GM.
“Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind that I can do the job,” he said.
It was Brière in full sales pitch mode, and his longest answer of the availability. He noted that even as a player, he was studying how his GMs managed their clubs, from Darcy Regier in Buffalo to Paul Holmgren in Philadelphia, Marc Bergevin in Montreal, and finally, Joe Sakic in Colorado, who was in the midst of the early stages of the Avalanche’s (ultimately successful) rebuild during Brière’s final playing season in 2014-15.
“Maybe I was hired officially under Chuck in the past year, but my journey has started a long, long time ago,” he said. “I’ve always been someone that pays attention to what’s going on, how processes are being done, and how I could use it if one day I’d be in that position. I’m not gonna lie, it’s something that I saw myself do from early on when I was playing. I always believed that I could be in this position one day.”
So now that he’s in this (interim) position, what did he reveal about what he might do as Flyers GM?
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Brière was adamant that the Flyers are facing a multiyear process, which puts him right in line with Tortorella’s view of the “pain” likely to come over the next few seasons. But he was equally unwavering in expressing his belief that a full-fledged “sell-everything” Chicago-style bloodbath all the way down to the under-25 players wasn’t part of his vision for said process.
“The young guys are not the guys that we would be shopping, obviously,” he said.
As for who would make up his front office, it was a mild surprise that Brière delivered a full-throated endorsement of assistant GM Brent Flahr, Fletcher’s longtime right-hand man and draft guru. But per a league source, the two have a strong relationship, and it’s possible that Flahr could indeed find a place of prominence in a Brière-run front office.
“That’s my expectation,” Brière said when asked if Flahr would remain even with Fletcher gone. “I have a great relationship with Brent. He’s been tremendous. He’s included me on everything since I started working with Chuck.
“I have a lot of confidence in Brent. You look at his track record at the draft. It’s pretty impressive. So yeah, I would say so.”
The senior advisers in the organization — Holmgren, Bob Clarke and Bill Barber in particular — didn’t get the same assurances that their roles would remain the same.
“I don’t know at this point. I am not sure,” Brière said when asked about their statuses. “What I can tell you is I have a lot of respect for those guys for what they’ve accomplished in their career, both on and off the ice. Lots of respect. I’ve been in this position for 48 hours. I’ve had a quick chat with them. At this point, that’s all that’s happened. We’ll see moving forward with what happens there.”
So Brière’s early vision for the front office and the Flyers as a whole does appear to be a fresh one.
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There are some holdovers -—Flahr doesn’t look to be going anywhere, at least through the 2023 draft process, which he has managed in his AGM role. In addition, the broad strokes of Brière’s plan did sound strikingly similar to the one that Fletcher unsuccessfully tried to sell by the tail end of his tenure.
But Brière’s articulation of said vision was different. It was clearer, more straightforward — and without the baggage that Fletcher (fairly or unfairly) carried on his back due to three consecutive years of on-ice failure.
If Brière is ultimately named the Flyers’ permanent general manager — and all signs currently point to that eventuality — he will be engineering a rebuild. He took care to make that abundantly clear on Sunday.
“That’s my belief. It needs to be done the right way,” he said. “We’ll have a lot of discussions in which direction we’re going to move, but there’s no doubt that this is not a quick fix in my mind.”
And no longer are the Flyers afraid to admit that.
(Photo: AP Photo / Matt Rourke)