Dave Isaac

(Cherry Hill) Courier-Post

PHILADELPHIA — While the Flyers’ playoff hopes are still next to nothing, at least one thing is going right for general manager Ron Hextall these days and it’s about 60 miles north of Philadelphia.

Back when he was with the Los Angeles Kings, Hextall was the assistant general manager for the NHL club and ran the minor-league team. Jordan Weal, now on the Flyers’ top line, is a product of what Hextall built Manchester Monarchs and what he’s trying to get to with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.

“You’ve got to build a winning culture,” said Weal, who was second in the AHL in scoring when the Flyers recalled him Feb. 10. “When I was in L.A., they were there when I got there. They were pretty much on the way to winning those (Stanley) Cups. I think it was my third year with the organization they won their first one. You just notice the attention to detail throughout the organization. You’ve got to believe you’re going to win every night and we knew we were going to win most nights. When you have that feeling, it’s contagious.”

Everyone is infected in Allentown, Pa., with the Phantoms set to break a playoff drought that has kept them out of the second season since 2009 when they were still in Philadelphia. That’s where the culture starts — the roots.

When Weal won the Calder Cup with the Monarchs two years ago and was playoff MVP, the Phantoms were dead last in the league in an old facility in upstate New York, geographically far removed from the Flyers and not getting a whole lot of resources to help them win.

That’s different now with Phantoms co-owner brothers Rob and Jim Brooks having built the PPL Center, which opened in 2014, for a reported $282 million.

“It’s probably the best in the league,” said Weal, who played 221 of his 264 AHL games for the Monarchs before joining the Flyers’ organization last January. “It’s brand spankin’ new. Everything is done right.”

It wasn’t just a new stadium that got the Phantoms back on track. The Flyers — like the Kings several years ago — hadn’t drafted well enough with their limited draft picks to field an AHL team with mostly homegrown prospects.

The Flyers thought it was a worthwhile gamble to trade three picks — two of them first-rounders — to get Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger in the summer of 2009 and if an errant stick to the eye two seasons later hadn’t ended his career, it likely would have been.

It took a toll on their development system and they traded away more draft picks to try to replace him.

Now that the Flyers have kept their picks and used them well, a growing percentage of the Phantoms is comprised of homegrown talent and now that talent is being used well also.

“We’ve got a good team, but there’s quite a few kids down there with a big chunk of the pie,” Hextall said. “They’re playing regular shifts, power play, penalty kill. That’s important. You don’t want to overload too much with veterans so that the kids get pushed down and don’t get in roles. There’s that fine line with handing it to them and making them earn it.”

Hextall credits Phantoms coach Scott Gordon with putting the players in those positions and in the proper timeframe.

Weal, for instance, didn’t get that opportunity right away. His first full season in the AHL he was healthy scratched for a lot of the first few months of the season because there were more bodies around due to the NHL’s lockout.

“The beginning of January was when I got to start playing full-time,” Weal said, “and when we got an injury to one of our older guys I got to play some top-six minutes and that’s when it really started clicking for me. It’s different for every guy.”

Robert Hägg, a Flyers second-round pick in 2013, recently said that veterans in the Phantoms room like captain Colin McDonald have brought the attitude back to where it should be. For years, the prospects on the Phantoms’ rosters didn’t know what winning was like.

That’s starting to change.

“For me, when I was in juniors we didn’t make the playoffs the first couple years and for the young guys coming in it was tough because that was the norm,” Weal said. “When you come into a winning organization and go deep into the playoffs every year, that feels normal. This is how it should be. You shouldn’t be done in mid-April. It should be late June.”

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