The search for a new general manager didn’t take long, only seven days. Now the question is how quickly the Flyers’ new decision maker hits the ground running and starts re-forming the roster in Philadelphia.

According to a league source, Chuck Fletcher, former GM of the Minnesota Wild and assistant GM with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Anaheim Ducks and Florida Panthers, has been named the successor to Ron Hextall, whom the Flyers fired last Monday.

The team got permission to speak with Fletcher Wednesday and held formal interviews Thursday and Sunday. He is expected to be formally introduced as the next GM in a press conference Wednesday.

Fletcher, 51, was hired away from a senior advisor role with the New Jersey Devils. He was the main man in Minnesota for nine seasons and the Wild had six consecutive playoff appearances under his watch before he was fired at the end of last season.

Prior to his tenue there, the Wild had finished higher than third place in the division only twice in the franchise’s first eight seasons. Once Fletcher got them back to the playoffs (which took three years to do) they have stayed ever since.

The Harvard graduate is an external candidate in that he never was previously part of the Flyers’ organization, but there are some ties.

His first job in the NHL was as assistant GM with the Panthers when Bob Clarke hired him in his only season running the team in South Florida. Part of the connection there is that Fletcher’s father, Cliff, a Hall of Fame executive, helped Clarke along early on in his general-managing days.

Fletcher may be best known for signing Ryan Suter and Zack Parise to matching 13-year, $98 million deals in free agency back in 2012. Flyers president Paul Holmgren, who was the driving force behind hiring Fletcher, was certainly in line with that decision. He reportedly offered both of them 12-year pacts when he was general manager of the Flyers that same July.

Among his other notable moves as the general manager in Minnesota, Fletcher turned Cal Clutterbuck and a third-round pick into Nino Niederreiter back in 2013. After acquiring him from the New York Islanders, Niederreiter has scored 104 goals in 414 games with Minnesota.

Fletcher also traded a third-round pick to the Arizona Coyotes in the following season to acquire goalie Devan Dubnyk. After joining the Wild, Dubnyk went on to win 27 of his 39 games in Minnesota that season and won the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, was a finalist for the Vezina Trophy and finished fourth in MVP voting.

Getting a goalie will probably be one of the first tasks for Fletcher and Holmgren said this week that whoever the new general manager is “now has a lot at his disposal” because the Flyers’ prospect cupboard is nearly fully stocked and the team has nearly $9 million in salary-cap space according to capfriendly.com.

Another early priority will be the third-line center spot. Jordan Weal has moved from center to wing, replaced by Scott Laughton with Jori Lehterä back on the fourth line. Weal hasn’t been able to do much in that spot despite providing the undersized forward with big wingers like Wayne Simmonds and James van Riemsdyk.

The expectation is that Fletcher can turn a 11-12-2 Flyers team back into contenders.

“I think that’s why the timing of this was so important because it’s early enough (to turn things around),” Comcast Spectacor CEO Dave Scott said Tuesday. “There’s lots of hockey to play. We thought that would be good. (Expectations are) where they were, to get deep into the playoffs and all the way if you can do it. You have time to get there. It’s amazing, the Metro is so tight. You hate being at the bottom of the pack but there’s not much disparity there right now.”

Heading into Monday’s action, the Flyers are five points out of a playoff spot with more than half the season left to go. Only 10 points separated first from last in the Metropolitan Division Monday morning so there is still plenty of time to get back in it.

The question is if the Flyers are on their way to doing so. They believe an emotional win in Pittsburgh Saturday, sparked by a big Wayne Simmonds fight, has them on their way.

“You could tell we were hungry,” defenseman Radko Gudas said. “We want to battle for each other. We did the little things right. We were helping each other in situations where this season we had a hard time helping each other. I thought it was a great team effort. It felt like we did have a purpose. I don’t want to say we didn’t have purpose in those games before, but we just felt really single-minded the whole time.”

For every player in the locker room for the Flyers, this is unchartered territory. No one has gone through a mid-season general manager change before and therefore, as Sean Couturier said, “It’s just kind of uncertainty, didn’t really know how to handle it.”

Now there’s someone in place and the directive from the top is for the Flyers to start making a push now, which may require trading pieces off the current roster.

That could create even more uncertainty in the short term, but the vibe from the Flyers is that they like hearing the organization will make moves to start winning this season.

“A new GM, a new point of view on all the things, I think the only thing guys here can control is how they perform and how they act,” Gudas said. “Like we say to the young guys, ‘You’ve got to control the things you can control,’ and leave the rest to the guys that can control the other things. There’s not much else we can do except for playing good hockey and being good teammates and making sure we’re focused on the right things.”

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