VOORHEES — As is the case at every practice, head coach Dave Hakstol was the last one on the ice Monday morning. It was the first time the Flyers took the ice since getting smacked around 6-0 by the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night. Three nights before that one, they were embarrassed by the Buffalo Sabres 5-2.

Hakstol is still with the Flyers. For now. The man that hired him, Ron Hextall, is not. The Flyers announced they relieved Hextall of his duties as general manager and executive vice president Monday morning. The players were informed just before taking the ice for practice.

“We thank Ron for his many significant contributions, but it has become clear that we no longer share the same philosophical approach concerning the direction of the team,” team president Paul Holmgren said in a press release. “In light of these differences, we feel it’s in the organization's best interests to make a change, effective immediately. I have already begun a process to identify and select our next general manager, which we hope to complete as soon as possible."

Holmgren brought Hextall back to the organization in July of 2013 and it was clear then that he would be Holmgren’s successor. After a year as the assistant general manager, Hextall was promoted to general manager and Holmgren to team president.

Hextall said, at the time, that everyone from Holmgren to the team’s late owner, Ed Snider, was on board with their plan to rebuild through the draft and develop their prospects to ultimately lead the team to victory. Somewhere along the next five seasons, there was a disconnect.

The Flyers did not make Holmgren nor Comcast Spectacor chairman and CEO Dave Scott available Monday to ask when the disconnect occurred or what it was regarding. Does that mean that the post-Hextall front office wants to win now and stop waiting?

No one seems to know just yet.

Only once did Hextall make a trade where the return was based on a player making an impact and not adding future draft picks or merely shedding salary-cap space. It came last season when the Flyers had to replace Brian Elliott temporarily and got Petr Mrazek from Detroit.

There were no other big trades, no coaching change. Just an underperforming team void of a general manager.

“Well, it’s surprising. Obviously when somebody’s been fired, it’s surprising,” Jake Voracek said. “I don’t really know what to say. It’s a tough one to make a comment on. I don’t know what was going on, what happened or something was going on that the organization thought something had to be done and they did it.

“If you are in the position that you don’t want to be, like we are right now, anything can happen. Is he going to be fired? Is there going to be any trades? Like, I don’t know. It’s not really in my power. I have no no-trade clause. It can happen to anyone. What happens to Hexy can happen to me, can happen to every other guy. Obviously, it’s something that we got to be aware of. It’s not under your control. You just go out there and do your best.”

For at least a day, it’s murky who is safe and who isn’t.

Hextall turned the Flyers’ salary cap situation around. According to capfriendly.com, the team has nearly $7 million in salary cap space. Early in his tenure the Flyers had so little cap space that when they faced an injury they had to call up the cheapest contract they had rather than the player they really wanted. There are certainly options here for whatever direction the organization wants to go.

The parity in the NHL makes it even more unclear. Monday morning the Flyers were one point from the basement of the Metropolitan Division with a 10-11-2 record and only seven points shy of first place.

“It’s a bit of a shock to the system and we haven’t been as good as we can be as a team on the ice,” James van Riemsdyk said. “We’ve been a little bit inconsistent and these things tend to happen when that’s the case. I think everyone obviously had higher expectations for us this year than where we’re sitting right now and we gotta use it the way we can and make sure we’re sticking together as a team and go on from there.”

The decision to fire Hextall may not be the only change the Flyers see. After being beaten handedly twice in four nights, it’s clear that there needed to be some sort of shake-up and perhaps a new general manager will choose a new coach. Hakstol, hired in 2016, is fourth on the Flyers’ all-time list in games coached at 269 games.

“I feel a responsibility for what happened today,” Hakstol said. “Nobody feels good about that in our room. That being said, I wholeheartedly also meant what I said (earlier). I’ve got a job to do. My job right now is to get our team ready to go and play a hockey game tomorrow and go and win that hockey game. That doesn’t change.

“I’m not looking over my shoulder. I never have. I never do. I focus on the job at hand and going forward. Those are decisions that aren’t up to me. Those will be great questions for you guys tomorrow in the press conference. Those aren’t things for me to speculate on. It’s been made very clear to me what my job is as we get into the near future is here. That’s where my focus is. I’ve never had a problem doing that in terms of my focus and where it’s at.”

Dave Isaac; @davegisaac; 856-486-2479; disaac@gannett.com