Flyers

How to Buy a Beat

By Kyle Scott

Published: Aug 14th, 2015 · 9:58 AM EDT

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Yesterday, 12:37 p.m.

Flyers head coach Dave Hakstol takes easily-amused, free-loading Flyers beat writers to lunch, at Olive Garden:

 

Yesterday, 4:15 p.m.

Tim Panaccio, still digesting unlimited breadsticks, writes glowingly about Saint Hakstol in a fluff piece about the coach’s visit to Ed Snider’s youth hockey camp. Panaccio 6:9-5 (which, mystically, happens to be the price of the OG’s lunch special):

Hakstol is motivated by challenges. While coaching a junior hockey team that won only nine games one season, Hakstol said, he was challenged to find positives and ways to improve despite obstacles. It convinced him he could be a good coach because he liked being around athletes and working with them to find solutions.

“The most important thing is to stay true to who you are and what you believe in,” he told the student athletes. “Every day, you have to find positives and fix things that need to be fixed. Have an even-keeled mentality.”

Hakstol spent over an hour with the campers.

As he was preparing to leave, Hakstol recalled going to Clare Drake camp with one or two friends and leaving every summer with many new friends.

“It’s the same here,” Hakstol said, as the kids skated behind him.

Amen.

 

Today, 3:01 a.m.

Frank Seravalli’s replacement at the Daily News, Jeff Neiburg, who has fully flushed the pasta from his system, writes about the chosen one whom the townspeople call Hakstol:

Dave Hakstol still remembers going to hockey camp growing up. A small-town kid from western Canada, he was allowed by his parents to pick one camp to go to each summer.

Year after year, Hakstol attended the Clare Drake Hockey School at the University of Alberta.

Yesterday morning, many years later, school was back in session. And the teacher walked into Scanlon Ice Rink at the Scanlon Recreation Center in Kensington, ready to work with a group of local kids.

Hakstol is no stranger to working with members of the local community, coming from a hockey-crazed environment at the University of North Dakota.

“Our community there, much like here, gave us so much,” Hakstol said. “Every chance we had, even in a busy year, we tried to do some little things where I guess it could be viewed as giving back a little. But, to be honest with you, just like on a day like today, there’s more of a benefit for me than anybody. It’s great to be here and to be part of it.”

The word of the Davey.

If all it takes is a lunch at Olive Garden, it might be smart for Hakstol to just take the beats – or at least Panaccio – out before all 82 games. Figure Panotch spends $28 $43 $607 on each meal (wine…). That’s roughly $50k for the season. Hakstol is making $2 million per. So consider it the cost of doing business. I bet if Berube had it to do all over again, he would’ve taken Mike Sielski to lunch on day one. All coaches should adopt the tactic. Hell, maybe Chip should take Les Bowen to Golden Corral to get him off his ass. [Old people like buffets, is the joke.]

Side note: I’m not above this sort of thing. I just have higher standards. So, yes, if Ruben Amaro took me to Capital Grill, I’d absolutely write a few fluff pieces about how he orchestrated what turned out to be a great trade deadline. Shit, if he let me get the porterhouse, I’d probably play him a hanjo on the way home. It’s all a negotiation. I just think the beats should aim higher.