New Flyers General Manager Chuck Fletcher was introduced to the media today.

He spoke for 25 minutes and the question about Dave Hakstol finally came at the 21:14 mark of the press conference.

Said Fletcher on the coaching staff:

They’re our coaches, the coaches of the Philadelphia Flyers. I spent time with Hak yesterday and again this morning, talked to him about what we want to do for the upcoming road trip and which players we’re going to bring on the trip. He’ll get tired of me. I’m around after every game, I’m around every morning. I like to have coffee with the coaches and just get a sense of what they wanna do each day.

I think you have to give people a chance to show how they’re going to work with you, and it’s easy to have opinions on the outside, but I think when you’re talking about making a decision on the future of a coaching staff, I think you’d better have a little bit more specific information than what I have right now.

I want it to work. I want it to be successful with this group. It’s not a threat or anything, but as I’ve said, if we don’t have the solutions in house, we’ll look outside. There’s no timetable for any of that other than we’re just trying to get better. We want to make the playoffs this year. We want to win a Stanley Cup as soon as we can. Every decision we make will be towards that goal. Right now we’re just starting.

I think that’s what we expected. Paul Holmgren and Dave Scott could have axed Hakstol along with Ron Hextall, but they’re leaving the decision up to Fletcher, who looks like he’s going to give Hak a shot to prove himself.

Thoughts?

Press conference video after the jump: