It’s five hours before the trade deadline and you’re talking about 2015????

Oh, wait. I get it. You wrote about this two years ago and doubling down on the insanity now. Cool, let’s do this.

The course of action seemed so obvious; so logical; but, ultimately, too repellant for Ron Hextall.

I don’t think it was obvious, and it definitely wasn’t logical. But you’re damn right it’s repellant.

The Flyers had just missed the playoffs for the second time in three seasons. Hextall, in his first full season as general manager, was preparing to fire coach Craig Berube. The time was ripe. It was time to remake the miscast roster. Time to chop from the top, to reap young talent in what was becoming an ever- younger NHL. That summer was the time to harvest talent for rookie coach Dave Hakstol,

Yes, it was time to harvest talent. Of course, that is unless you already have talent on the roster.

which he then could mold in his image. It was time to trade Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek. It was time to give the "C" to Wayne Simmonds.

What is it about petulant children with megaphones that makes them harp on this meaningless idea?

It was time to sell Giroux's genius at its peak;

See the thing about peaks is that you don’t know they are peaks until they are over. Which is why trading Giroux at his peak would have been an idiotic idea, but carry on.

time to maximize Voracek's value as an emerged All-Star facing free agency a year later.

What good GM doesn’t see an All-Star and realize it’s time to trade him? Good going, Ron.

It would have hurt, but it was time to sell. They did not. Now, they cannot.

Actually they probably can and you never get around to proving this, but whatever dude I guess expecting you to prove a point was kind of silly of me.

The trade deadline arrives at 3 p.m. Wednesday. A philly.com poll of 4,331 voters Tuesday showed that Giroux is the Flyer most voters want to see traded; 28.7 percent, in fact.

(Breaking news: roughly 1,200 Philly sports fans are dumb.)

It’s always good to cite statistics when you’re making a point. Unless citing that statistic proves that you don’t know how statistics work.

Too bad.

Too bad I’m spending my morning reading this shit.

Unless some team sees 11th-hour hidden value in one or the other,

I can think of no fewer than 29 other NHL teams who would find value in Voracek and Giroux.

both "G" and Jake will remain the two-headed face of a franchise that seems resigned to miss the playoffs for the third time in five seasons; a franchise with no playoff series wins since 2012. Giroux and Voracek will remain as well-paid reminders that rebuilding seldom happens in an eyeblink.

So you’re saying that sometimes it takes a few years and maybe you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the damn bath water? Hmm, good point there.

This is not an outrage; just bad planning.

What’s an outrage is your use of a semicolon in this sentence.

Hextall has sold patience and organic growth since his promotion from assistant GM in 2014. His co-tenants at the Wells Fargo Center know that the queasy, seasick sensation of what "patience" feels like. Really, they're kind of the same thing: waiting for Embiid and Noel and Simmonds to play; and, hoping against hope for the futures of Rubtsov and Vorobyov, Sandstrom and Sanheim, Myers and Morin.

Imagine thinking that the NBA and NHL are even a little bit alike. Like, really imagine what it must be like for your brain to think those thoughts. Got it? Now follow your natural instincts and repeatedly smash your head into your keyboard.

They will arrive one day. Will Captain Claude and the Happy Czech

This is literally the dumbest nickname I’ve ever heard.

still be skating? The seas are choppy now, but rebuilding is rough.

I’ve read this five times and I still don’t know what he means.

The presence of Giroux and Voracek just make the waves seem rougher. They raise expectations; foolish expectations.

This isn’t how you use a semicolon, but OK.

With a little more courage and a lot more foresight Hextall could have traded one, or both, for a significant haul of more economic youth (Giroux surely would have waived his no-trade clause).

There is zero way to know whether or not Claude Giroux would waive his no-trade, unless you routinely have beers with Claude Giroux and are his best friend. (Guessing not, Marcus.)

Also, simple common sense will tell you attempting to trade players with no-movement clauses has a cooling effect on the return you’ll get for them. Convenient to leave that out of the story here.

Such a purge so soon after the exit of Mike Richards and Jeff Carter might have enraged the fan base, but the atmosphere was right.

It definitely sends a good message to future players when your franchise trades away Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, James van Riemsdyk, Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux all within a four-and-a-half-year period.

It was the Demolition Era in Philadelphia. Hexy, a returning hero, had more local equity than Chip Kelly or Andy MacPhail.

Yes, I’m sure that Hextall being a former player for the Flyers would have made a dumbass decision seem less insane.

Sam Hinkie?

“Sixers have nobody but Hinkie to blame,” by Marcus Hayes, Daily News Columnist, February 10, 2015.

He'd have traded "G," Jake and Lauren Hart.

You can’t trade anthem singers. People forget that.

It was clear to some, if not to Hextall, that, given the Flyers' composition in 2015 and their planned reconstruction, they had no chance to win big.

If by “some” you mean “Marcus Hayes and internet commenters,” I guess you’re right.

Sure, they might float around the fringes of NHL's postseason group but, frankly, they weren't going to win a playoff series for at least two years, maybe three. As such, you simply cannot allot $33 million to two players for two seasons.

This seems like a dumb rule that I’m sure winning teams break all the time.

Clearly, though, Hextall disagreed. Oh, well. That ship has sailed.

So why the hell are you writing this, dude?

At this point, considering their salaries, age and production, neither Giroux nor Voracek would bring much return.

Jake Voracek is the same age that Claude Giroux was two years ago. Two years ago is when you insisted the Flyers trade Claude Giroux. Hm.

Hextall & Co. can only hope that they experience a renaissance. That, too, seems unlikely. Giroux is a 5-11 (no he's not),

What? And who gives a shit?

185-pound, 29-year-old finesse center in his ninth grueling season, undersized and is diminishing by the day. He averaged 1.02 points per game from 2010-2015 and went to three All-Star games. He has averaged 0.79 points per game the past two seasons and spent the last two All-Star breaks resting.

John Scott was an All-Star a year that Claude Giroux was not. What’s your point?

Teams have leaned on him, and they have stopped him. He averaged 0.30 goals per game from 2010-2016. He is averaging 0.19 this season, and is a minus-18.

I’m not taking the bait.

You could see this coming; it arrived with a thud last spring in the first-round loss to the Capitals. Giroux had 61 points in his first 57 career playoff games but the Caps stifled him: one assist in six games.

It’s almost like you can just pick a stretch of six games where a player (and his entire goddamn team) goes cold and use it to fit your shitty narrative, but what do I know?

The Flyers won two games. They were shut out twice, scored a total of six goals and never scored more than two in a game. It was Fool's Gold. Like Giroux, Voracek had one point in the series against the Capitals. Like Giroux, Voracek's production has dwindled, too; from 0.89 points per game from 2012-15 to 0.78 since.

What a HUGE DECLINE.

Voracek is a minus-20 this season. There are mitigating circumstances. Matt Read, Sean Couturier, Michael Raffl and Dale Weise underperformed this season.

It’s almost like Marcus got really close to understanding what is really going on, but instead decided to jam a railroad spike into his frontal lobe and write this article instead.

That, too, lies at Hextall's feet. Hextall's youth infusion fizzled, too. After a fine rookie season defenseman Shayne "Ghost" Gostisbehere has, in fact, played like an undefined, shimmering apparition.

Hey, this isn’t a vocabulary test.

Rookie forward Travis Konecny is undersized and underwhelming.

He’s also a teenager that has played less than a full season. Is it time to trade him too?

The defense was porous; the goaltending, inconsistent and the coach, a year removed from college, unequipped to manufacture change.

Again, Marcus, you are so so close to understanding what’s going on, but I guess at this point you had already written 500+ words on how Giroux and Voracek stink, so may as well stick to the narrative.

None of these mitigating circumstances completely excuse the play of Giroux and Voracek. None has has much to do with the fact that they weren't traded two years ago, when trading them made sense. hayesm@phillynews.com

hayesm@phillynews.com