To those not familiar with the way the matured version of Ron Hextall thinks, it always seemed an oddity that a former No. 1 goaltender would be content with entering an NHL season without a clear No. 1 goaltender, content instead to man the position with two middle-market entities as he has with Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth, and as he once had when Steve Mason was here.
Hextall would not have liked it any more than Mason did, which was a contributing factor to the parting of ways. Yet neither Mason nor Neuvirth was the reason the Flyers fell in the first round of their only playoff appearances over the last five years.