1. Ron Hextall was fired as general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers this week. His fatal flaw was apparently his “unyielding” patience.



Said Flyers CEO Dave Scott: “We talked at length about this decision, and for me, I sort of boiled it down to one question: Do I think that we can do better as a team now? Not two years or three years from now. But now. And I think that answer was yes.”



It is understandable, in a way, that Scott would arrive at that conclusion. The Flyers are paying a lot of money to star forwards Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek, neither of whom are getting any younger.



But you can also see it from Hextall’s point of view. The Flyers’ most glaring weakness is their goaltending, and Hextall likely saw Carter Hart as the solution. But Hart is only 20, and Hextall didn’t want to rush the kid’s development.



“He was unyielding in his plan and remained that way,” club...