It may not seem like it sometimes, but every NHL team has a long-term plan. Even the teams that appear to be stuck in neutral or that run into the ground have a team vision which looks really good on paper and should work. The most challenging aspect of team building is actually seeing that vision through during the difficult times, when the pressure starts to seep in from external sources.

“The hardest part is execution,” Los Angeles Kings GM Dean Lombardi told ESPN.com on Wednesday. “The hardest part of execution is patience. The inability to show patience can come from yourself, it can come from the owner, it can come from fans, it can come from the media. You have to have that conviction to stay with it. That’s not easy.”

During some of the most difficult times in the early days of building the Kings, Lombardi had assistant GM Ron Hextall to help keep the vision intact.

“When we sat down from the first day, we knew what we wanted to do. We were always able to stay within the parameters of that plan. Some things worked, some things didn’t. We’re human. Whenever I got frustrated, he was there to say, ‘We have to be patient,’ and vice versa,” Lombardi said. “We kind of fed off each other.”

The result was a Kings team that is now one of the league’s powers, and in the process, Hextall has reaffirmed his convictions about how to correctly build a successful team.

The Philadelphia Flyers are now the beneficiaries.

Lombardi sees what Hextall has done in a short period of time as general manager in Philadelphia and isn’t surprised. Hextall had the blueprint, the smarts, the work ethic, the respect and the credibility to pull it off.

In the past year, Hextall has accomplished two of the most difficult tasks a GM has to tackle while building a winner: clearing cap space during a time in which cap space is at an absolute premium, and stocking the system with prospects during a time in which teams have started to hoard draft picks.

“Both take patience,” Lombardi said. “They’re both critical.”

On Thursday, ESPN Insider prospect guru Corey Pronman released his ranking of the top prospects in the Flyers' organization, and for the first time in a long time, it’s crowded at the top.

The consensus is that the Flyers' pipeline strength is on defense, but Pronman’s rankings suggest Hextall has been able to build more balance into the system than people realize, in part because of a forward like Oskar Lindblom. For the Flyers' rebuild to be successful, Hextall and his staff can’t just hit on first-round picks. They need a few steals outside the top 30 to succeed, as well.

Lindblom is the best candidate.

He slipped to the fifth round of the 2014 draft and then blossomed last season, turning heads with a strong performance in the IIHF World Junior Championships, registering nine points in seven games.

Concerns about his skating started to disappear.

“His skating took a step forward,” Hextall said during a phone conversation last week. “That’s huge. He’s not the most fleet of foot guy -- if you look at him now compared to a year ago, it’s, ‘Wow, how far has he come. He’s come a long way.’ Oskar is smart, he’s got good size, he has good hands, he sees the ice well. He’s a well-rounded player.”


The Flyers wanted Travis Konecny badly enough to trade up to pick No. 24 to get him. Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
The Flyers also added balance in their organization by trading up to grab forward Travis Konecny in the first round of June’s draft. Konecny immediately became Philadelphia’s top prospect, according to Pronman.

As strategies go, teams shouldn't trade up at that point in the draft too often (Konecny was selected No. 24 overall). Those trades are historically won by the team trading down, simply because of the ability to add more draft picks at a time in the draft where there’s not too much variance in the likelihood that you’re selecting a future NHL player. It’s better to have more picks than to trade up for one specific player.

Normally, Hextall would agree with that theory.

“If you said to me, ‘What do I prefer to do?’ -- I prefer to have more bullets,” Hextall said. "Philosophically, I think a lot of people are on the same page. We weren’t going to make that deal unless Travis was sitting there. We wanted him that bad.”

If they didn’t get him, the Flyers were exploring trading down out of the No. 29 spot.

That’s how much they like Konecny.

The other key for the Flyers will be how Hextall manages the influx of young defensemen coming into the system.

Philadelphia took Ivan Provorov with the No. 7 overall pick in the draft, to join a pipeline that already has Travis Sanheim, Sam Morin, Robert Hagg and Shayne Gostisbehere on defense.

It’s great to have good young defensemen, but championship teams don’t typically win with an inexperienced blue line. The ideal mix is youth up front and experience on the back end. The challenge for Hextall and his staff will be to slowly work these young defensemen into the NHL so they’re not all arriving at the same time.

It goes back to having a plan and sticking to that plan.

“We’ve got to be cognizant of not putting our young defensemen in too early. We have to be cognizant of not waiting too long, there will be too much overlap. We’re going to keep a close eye on all our young defensemen,” Hextall said. “They’ll start filtering in at some point this year.”

When he took over as GM, Hextall said he got full buy-in to his patient approach from owner Ed Snider. He said team president Paul Holmgren is completely on board with the change in direction with the Flyers. And Hextall credited Holmgren with building a team that has more talent at the NHL level than the Kings did during the building of a championship franchise in Los Angeles.

When the young Flyers arrive, they’ll be joining a roster that has cornerstones Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier, Jakub Voracek and Wayne Simmonds.

There are still bad contracts on the books, and player development is just as important as drafting, so converting these talented draft picks into NHL players is the next step. But Hextall's approach is already paying off, fast enough that he believes fans in Philly won’t have to wait too long for the results on the ice.

“Quite frankly, I think we got better. Michal Neuvirth is going to help us. Evgeni Medvedev is an upgrade. Sam Gagner is the type of player we needed, and were going to look forward to getting in free agency,” Hextall said. “We expect to be a playoff team.”

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