If Steve Mason meant what he said, this should not have happened. If the goalie’s support Monday of coach Craig Berube was sincere, then there was no good reason for Flyers general manager Ron Hextall to do what he did Friday.
What Hextall did, of course, was the same thing that all those Flyers GMs before him did with alarming regularity. He fired the coach after one full season behind the bench.
A year ago at this time, Berube was a coach of the year candidate after imposing the same will on his players that allowed him to play 17 seasons in the NHL with an extremely limited skill set.