PHILADELPHIA — Ed Snider’s old penthouse office at Wells Fargo Center has been turned into a conference room, as if the work of the illustrious businessman who founded the Philadelphia Flyers will need to be done by many.
“It seems so much bigger now,” said Dave Scott, now the chairman and chief executive of Comcast Spectacor and the governor of the Flyers.
Scott, 65, was referring to the size of the room, but he could have been talking about the challenge of the job he inherited from Snider, who died at 83 in April 2016. Snider looms everywhere: A banner with his signature and “A Flyer Forever” hangs above their practice rink, and a statue of him stands outside Wells Fargo Center, their arena.
Scott has been refreshing the 22-year-old arena and updating the team’s image — he had a big hand in creating Gritty, the Flyers’ popular new mascot — but he also has been heavily involved recently in shaping the product on the ice for the first time as an owner.
The Flyers are one of the N.H.L.’s most valuable franchises, listed by Forbes this month at $800 million, seventh among 31 teams. They have regularly been among the top five teams in home attendance since the 2004-5 lockout.
But the Flyers, as practically any Philadelphia sports fan will tell you, have not won the Stanley Cup since 1975. In the last six full seasons, the Flyers have failed to make the playoffs three times and lost in the first round the other three times. They are 13-15-4, the second-worst record in the Eastern Conference, and have heard a growing volume of jeers from the crowd.
“At the end of the day,” Scott said, speaking of the task of selling tickets, “you have to have a winning team.”
About three weeks ago, Scott and the club president Paul Holmgren fired General Manager Ron Hextall, soon replacing him with Chuck Fletcher, the former G.M. of the Minnesota Wild. Fletcher, 51, hired an assistant coach and an assistant general manager — and then axed Coach Dave Hakstol on Monday.
Hakstol, whom Hextall hired in 2015 from the University of North Dakota, was replaced on an interim basis with Scott Gordon, a former Islanders coach who was coaching the Flyers’ top farm team in Allentown, Pa.
“I came away with tremendous respect with Dave as a human being,” Fletcher said during a news conference at the Flyers’ practice rink on Monday in Voorhees, N.J., “but in my eyes, there was a disconnect in what he was preaching and how the players were playing.”
The Flyers have been troubled by injuries, especially to their goaltenders. Although the consensus among club executives was that the top prospect Carter Hart, 20, could use more time in the minors, he was called up on Monday. Fletcher said the timing of Hakstol’s firing and Hart’s promotion was coincidental.
Hart, in his first professional season, was in goal for a 3-2 victory over Detroit on Tuesday. He became the club-record sixth goalie to start a game for the Flyers this season.
Scott and Holmgren wanted to make major changes in the organization before it was too late. The Flyers entered Tuesday 11 points out of a playoff berth.
“It’s been, I think, the weirdest season so far in my career since I entered the league,” said forward Jake Voracek, 29, who is in his 11th N.H.L. season. “In talking about it with the guys, I think it’s rock bottom. We have to figure it out in the locker room and play better.”
As Fletcher evaluated Hakstol and the team during the last four games of a futile western trip, speculation arose that the Flyers were interested in hiring Joel Quenneville, the three-time Cup-winning coach with the Chicago Blackhawks who was fired in early November.
Fletcher said that he had not sought permission from the Blackhawks to speak about the coaching job with Quenneville, and that he had not even talked to him socially in more than two years. Fletcher said he intended to have Gordon coach the rest of the season.
“That’s going to be a lot longer interview than most people have,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher said he wanted to take his time to figure out what he sought from his new coach. But Scott had made it clear in an interview how he wanted the Flyers to play.
“My personal feeling is that the game should still be physical,” he said.
Snider built the punishing, intimidating hockey team that became known as the Broad Street Bullies in the mid-1970s. Although hockey has generally become much faster with less fighting in recent years, Philadelphia fans still hold the Bullies era in the highest reverence, probably because the Flyers won two Cups playing that way.
The Flyers were tied for 18th in the N.H.L. with a mere five fighting majors, none in the first 21 games. Before a recent home game, though, Dave Schultz, who was known as the Hammer and the baddest Bully of them all, signed autographs in the nearby Broad Street Bullies Pub.
“We had such a great, iconic brand,” Scott said. “We had sort of a unique ID.”
Out of patience for Hextall’s methodical approach for developing young players, team officials have talked to Fletcher about restoring some aspects of the old image, Scott said.
Scott moved to Philadelphia in 2005 to work under Snider as Comcast Cable’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, and then in 2013 became president and chief operating officer of Comcast Spectacor, the parent company.
Snider, or Mr. Snider, as he is still referred to by everyone who works for the Flyers, had cancer in his final years, forcing him to trim his schedule. Scott moved into Snider’s job and watches as many home games as he can from a suite far above the ice.
Scott, like others around the organization, was optimistic heading into the season. The Flyers had rebounded from a slow start last year to qualify for the playoffs for the second time under Hakstol and gave the Pittsburgh Penguins a tougher-than-expected challenge in the playoffs.
But this season spun out of control quickly. Scott and Holmgren agreed that it was time to make a move with Hextall, which meant that there would probably also be a coaching change.
“I was an aggressive guy; Ron was more of a deep-thought-out guy,” Holmgren said at the news conference at which Hextall’s firing was announced. “I think both approaches had good qualities, both approaches probably had bad qualities when you drill right down to it. But we’re here today to do what’s right in my mind, and in Dave’s mind, what’s right for the organization.”
A week later, in the conference room that used to be Snider’s office, Scott said, “My sense on balance is that the fans are happy we did something.”
Scott said Flyers fans — who have seen the 76ers, the Phillies and the Eagles win world championships since their last Cup — have been remarkably patient. A teardown like this might not lead even to a playoff berth in the spring, let alone a Stanley Cup.
But it was time to move. Mr. Snider probably would have done the same thing.
“It’s nice coming into a situation like that, where everybody wants to win,” Scott said. “It kind of really filtered into our other businesses.”
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