The second in a two-part series.

The Flyers open the on-ice portion of training camp on Sept. 15 with rookie camp beginning on Sept. 11. General manager Ron Hextall will have some tough decisions to make. Before those calls have to be made, he sat down with Flyers reporter Dave Isaac to go over a variety of topics.

Part I:Hextall on PTOs, the Olympics, Nolan Patrick and more

DI: Part of why Nolan Patrick is getting a lot of attention is when you look down the middle of your lineup and see Claude Giroux at the top, he’s struggled the last several seasons. What’s your concern level with him? Not even just last year, when his 5-on-5 numbers really dipped, his production has declined for the last several years.

RH: Well, it’s not fair just to look at Claude because when you look at that you’ve got to look at your team as well. In some of the years that he produced really big numbers, if you look at the group of forwards they had they were a very talented group. They played a little bit of a different system as well. I’m not so concerned with the numbers as most people are, but Claude does need to come back this year and be a better player than he was last year.

Again, I’m not so worried about the numbers as I am him being the best player he can be, which last year obviously he had the (sports hernia) surgery and stuff. He changed his training a little bit this year. There’s certain things he’s doing. I think last year the World Cup, in hindsight, was probably the worst thing that could have happened for him because it shortened his rehab/workout window in the summer trying to get over the surgery. I think it was much of that time at the World Cup that hurt him as it was…if you look at the first part of the year he was actually pretty good and then he started to dip. If you don’t have a full summer, a lot of times it will show up later in the year because you just can’t maintain over the course of the year. I believe that was a big chunk of what happened to Claude. He knows he’s a better player. We know he’s a better player. We’ve got (Valtteri Filppula) for the whole year, (Jordan Weal) for the whole year. We’re gonna be a better top-nine group where he’s gonna have better players on a more consistent basis to play with. There’s no doubt in our minds that he’s gonna bounce back.

DI: So part of it is not having a good enough supporting cast. But is it bad enough where you go to Dave Hakstol and ask him to tweak the system so that Claude can do his thing?

RH: No, because every system works. It’s the attention to detail and how good are your players? Every system works. In the end it comes down to your players executing, the talent level of your players. Are there some things we can do better? Of course there are. All of us. Claude, myself, every other player on our team, the coaches, we can all do better. We have to do better than we did last year.

DI: Not specific to Patrick, but your prospect pool has gotten rave reviews recently. Some of that is building over time, but what’s changed from say five years ago? (Assistant GM and director of player personnel) Chris Pryor has been here a long time and always ran scouting. Are you guys just better at evaluating talent now?

RH: Philosophically we’ve changed a little bit. We know we’re in a (salary) cap world and drafting and developing is important. It’s always going to be. You can’t just say…like Chicago’s had a really good run, but Chicago drafting and developing still has to be important and it is. There’s future years. You can’t look in a vacuum and say we’re going to be good the next two years. It doesn’t work in a cap world.

Our vision was to be competitive, build up our prospect pool, our minor-league system and over the course of three years our guys have done a terrific job. We’ve got a lot of work to do still, but our scouts and Chris and Barry (Hanrahan, another assistant GM) and everybody, they’ve done a good job. Our development guys, our minor-league coaches, our amateur scouts, everybody’s been doing their part. Everybody’s been doing their jobs. The one thing we haven’t done, we haven’t come off of our vision. I talked to Mr. (Ed) Snider about it when he hired me over three years ago. This is what we have to do and this is what we’re going to do. He was right on board. Dave Scott (CEO of Comcast Spectacor) has been absolutely terrific. They know what we’re doing. Sometimes it’s a little bit painful and it’s not a quick process, but where we’re at right now we’re in a good spot. We’re going to get younger every year and we should get better every year.

DI: A couple of those young guys will probably make your roster this year. Is there a number in mind that is too many rookies?

RH: Just to sit here and say, ‘OK, we’re going to put five rookies on the team,’ well I don’t know in three weeks, five weeks, if five rookies are going to be ready or if three rookies or two rookies. It’s pretty dangerous to say, ‘We’re going to put this many rookies on the team.’ You try to have that balance between how many you have, but a lot of it has to do with what stage they’re at. A lot of our guys have spent time in the minors. They’re not coming straight out of junior hockey where they’ve played 72 games against little boys and they’re not big and strong. Our guys are pretty mature. So the guys that are vying for spots on our team, they’re not 18 or 19-year-olds. Other than Nolan, they’re guys who have put their time in and hopefully they’re ready to make an impact at this level.

You saw Pittsburgh last year. Those kids in their lineup…those kids are 23-years-old though. People say, ‘Oh, wow, Pittsburgh and the kids.’ Yeah, the kids are 23-year-old kids. It’s a lot different than putting 18, 19, 20-year-old green players in your lineup, guys that have put sometime in in the American League or played in college for four years. We feel like our guys are not going to be rookies where it’s going to be a total learning experience every night. They’re going to make their mistakes, of course. Veterans will make their mistakes and rookies will probably make more mistakes, but we feel like these guys are hopefully ready to take that next step where they help us become a better team, not just put them in because they’re rookies and we’re gonna try to develop them into NHL players. No. We hope and believe they’ve got a good chance of being NHL players this year. There’s a big difference.

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