PHILADELPHIA — Comcast Spectacor chairman and CEO Daniel Hilferty didn’t shy away Friday from shedding light onto the process that ultimately led to the Philadelphia Flyers choosing Keith Jones to be their president of hockey operations.
They spent weeks whittling their list of candidates — which at one point was over 100 — down to three. They employed the help of outside advisers, namely Modern Executive Solutions (which included former Sixers GM Billy King) and Neil Glasberg, who aided in their coaching search last summer. They listened and learned about different team- and organization-building perspectives from all of their candidates. And this week, it finally came to a close with the announcement that Jones was the pick.
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But in the minds of Hilferty and the rest of the decision-makers in the organization, there was no need for such a search to fill the “open” general manager position. No interviews were held.
Why? They already believed they had their man in interim GM Daniel Briere, who had the tag removed and was officially named the team’s 10th general manager on Thursday.
“I can tell you from the first day that we really interacted, I viewed him as the next GM of the Philadelphia Flyers,” Hilferty said. “So the process went on in my head, in conversations with Valerie (Camillo) just watching how (Briere) and (John Tortorella) interacted, we just felt strongly there was no need for a process. We had our general manager.”
Sure, much of the talk Friday from Hilferty and Camillo centered around the importance of collaboration — communication between the three members of the new hockey triumvirate, improved relations between the hockey operations and business departments, which they expect Jones will help foster. And of course, there was much discussion about getting the Flyers back on track in terms of on-ice results.
But throughout it all, one truth was abundantly clear: rebuilding the hockey team will be Briere’s show.
“It was clear to all of us from the start that Danny Briere was the right person for this job,” Camillo added. “He’s brilliant. He’s data-driven. He’s analytical. He’s hardworking. He’s a great guy. I’ve known him for going on almost five years, and he is ready to rebuild this team into a perennial contender.”
Briere himself expressed his gratitude for the confidence placed in him, and his belief that he can indeed justify their faith.
“If there’s one message that I want to send out today, especially to our most loyal fans, is that you have my full attention,” he said. “It’s been an incredible honor to serve the last two months as the GM of the team and the fact of the matter is that it’s only made me hungrier to turn this thing around.”
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When the Flyers announced that the president of hockey operations role would be formally separated from the GM position, it was an open question as to whether it would be the PoHO or the GM who would ultimately be calling the team-building shots. After all, both the Phillies and the Sixers in this very city have a similar role distribution in their front offices, and the power in those situations very much lies with the president.
Not in this case. For the Flyers, the buck stops with Briere when it comes to constructing the team. And Jones didn’t shy away from acknowledging as much in his first remarks since the hire.
“I’m here for Danny Briere, whatever he needs, whenever he needs it,” Jones said. “I will give my opinion to Danny, and Danny will make the final decision on player personnel, trades, etc. He’s going to be busy. I will be there for him at all times. That will be my role.”
That, in the end, was the role that Hilferty and the rest of those included in the hiring process envisioned the president of hockey operations filling. Hilferty even acknowledged that the belief they already had the right GM (and the right head coach in Tortorella) did affect the PoHO search.
“Just to say it bluntly, some of the candidates who have great reputations of their own in hockey, they had a hard and fast way (of) ‘This is the way I do it. We’ll see if the other two (members of the triumvirate) meet my standard.’ And I just didn’t view it that way,” Hilferty explained.
Hilferty contended that their PoHO prerequisites didn’t shrink the pool too much, though it did remove a few candidates from consideration. But it was clear that the chosen president of hockey operations would need to be on board with Briere having full authority over hockey decisions, and Tortorella sticking around as head coach. They weren’t going to hire a president who demanded that the planned leadership group be completely revamped; they wanted a PoHO who was excited to complement the leaders the Flyers already had, and very much wanted to keep.
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“I was influenced by watching Torts — he doesn’t even know times I was watching him — (and) watching Danny, and thinking, ‘Well, we don’t want someone who’s going to come in and clean house,’ because we felt we have the best coach in the league for what we’re trying to accomplish,” Hilferty said. “I feel we have the best general manager to help build this franchise. Keith was just the third and final piece, because we had such faith in those two individuals.”
Now, it’s not that the president of hockey operations will have no power. Hilferty confirmed that Jones will indeed be heading up the entire hockey ops department — meaning, most importantly, that he’ll have hiring and firing responsibilities over everyone in the department. In other words, if Briere isn’t succeeding as GM, Jones will be the one deciding whether to let him go. As expected, the president of hockey operations will be the final, necessary check on the GM. In addition, he’ll be working closely with the business department to ensure unity between the two sides of the organization, and he’ll play a major role in driving and delivering the public narrative surrounding the team.
“An added attraction to us in a president — and Keith Jones embodies it — is that affect, that willingness to go out there and tell a story and lead us all on a journey,” Hilferty said. “Fans, owners, players — lead us all on a journey.”
But make no mistake — when it comes to hockey decisions, Jones will be a resource to Briere, not his superior.
And Jones unsurprisingly is perfectly fine with that.
“The most important thing I think, is collaboratively working together,” he said. “That’s something I’ve done in every job that I’ve had in my life, whether I was playing or in my post-playing career in television.”
Jones’ willingness to function within the Flyers’ structure surely played a role in why he ultimately nabbed the job. After all, Jones has deep ties to the organization, even going beyond his time as a player and his years serving as color commentator for the club at NBC Sports Philadelphia. Jones noted on Friday that he was a longtime confidant of team founder Ed Snider, who he suspected wouldn’t be surprised to see Jones standing in front of the media today in this position. In fact, other Flyers regimes had brought up the possibility of him joining the organization officially in one form or another. As a result, it took him about 10 seconds to accept the formal offer this week. In Jones, the Flyers have a smart hockey mind with no designs on usurping Briere’s decision-making power or forcing out Tortorella, in addition to being one of the kindest, most well-liked people in the game, who is excited to open up his vast rolodex of contacts around the league to help Briere in his attempt to rebuild the club.
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“I think those relationships do matter,” Jones said. “And I can introduce Danny to some of the guys that he may not have a close relationship with. I just want to give Danny every resource he has to do an incredible job as the general manager.”
Those factors outweighed the importance of giving Briere a more experienced front-office resource — say, a former NHL GM — to aid him in his full-time transition to the big chair.
“For me, it was about leadership skills, and it was about getting the best people that would combine with the other two members,” Hilferty said when asked if it was ever a consideration to prioritize a PoHO candidate with extensive NHL front office experience to counterbalance a relative neophyte GM. “So I would say I didn’t give a lot of thought to having experience in that in that role before. For me it was about finding that person that was the third part of that triumvirate, that would make the collective more successful. And I would say in that regard, I never considered what their job was before. I just considered what the three together could do.”
Hilferty also pushed back on the criticism that the two hires were just business as usual for the Flyers by once again picking two former players to manage the club. In fact, Hilferty brought it up unprompted in his opening remarks, even before the question-and-answer section of the news conference.
“I know some are thinking, here they go again. Hiring two former Flyer players isn’t a fresh start,” he said. “Let me share with you that during the process, our goal was to hire the best candidates. It just happens that they’re former Flyers.”
Tortorella, in quintessential Torts style, combatively backed Hilferty up in that regard as well.
“I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I don’t get sometimes when in this process, when people start talking about Flyers alumni — Jonesy an ex-Flyer, Danny an ex-Flyer. What has happened? Why do people think that they’re diseased?” he asked.
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In Tortorella’s mind, that Briere and Jones are former Flyers is a positive point in their favor, not a negative.
“I’m proud that they are Flyers,” he said. “I’m proud of these guys over here, and other alumni that care about this organization. And that’s what thrills me the most — I think we have strong personalities, and I think they care. And I don’t get some of the thinking out in this city, how it’s ‘ex-Flyers’ and they’re doing it the same way. Goddamn. It is so important to have that belief.”
Hilferty, unsurprisingly, agreed.
“When you pick the right person, it doesn’t matter where they’re from,” he said. “I just want to make sure that everybody knows that we understand and appreciate this proud tradition of this organization. The fact that these two individuals know it and understand it, I think is an advantage, not a disadvantage.”
That said, Hilferty admitted that it’s on the Flyers to change the minds of doubters, who he sees and acknowledges.
“There’s going to be naysayers,” he said. “I understand that. I read it. I read everything — well, not everything, there’s some things I won’t. But the proof will be in the pudding.”
And it will be Briere with the biggest role in making that pudding.
It will be his job to take what he hears regarding his players from Tortorella, and the seen-it-all hockey advice from Jones, and meld it into a unified, cohesive vision of how to build a winning Flyers team. He has a supportive president of hockey operations, one who will be in more of an advisory and oversight role than telling him what to do. He has a coach who, according to Hilferty, believes Briere has “bite” and respects his willingness to stand up for his team-building opinions. He has an ownership group that is behind the Flyers 100 percent financially, with Hilferty even making a point to emphatically state that Comcast Spectacor has no interest in selling the team, despite the fact the rumor was brought up by multiple candidates during the hiring process.
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“Know that our goal is singular — to deliver a championship or more and to be the envy of the NHL,” Hilferty said.
But in the end, it will be Briere’s decisions most of all that determine whether this looming rebuild will succeed.
“I consider it my highest duty to rebuild and restore this team to its winning ways for years to come,” Briere said.
Friday served as the final confirmation that ownership is going to give him every chance to do so. From the start of this process, Briere was their GM pick, which guided the entire president of hockey operations search and the nature of the position itself. They’re that high on his potential as an NHL executive.
“When the lights are the brightest, Danny Briere is at his best,” Camillo added.
The Flyers now have to hope that Briere brings the same penchant from his playing career for making the biggest plays at the most crucial times to his new job — guiding the team out of probably the worst position in its long and illustrious history.
(Photo: AP Photo / Matt Slocum)