It was not all that long ago that Philadelphia Flyers general manager Ron Hextall was an assistant general manager with the Los Angeles Kings, helping to enact one of the more landscape-shifting trades in recent NHL history - a trade that saw the Kings build a two-time Stanley Cup Winner.
Ahead of the Kings' visit to Philadelphia tonight to begin a five-game road trip, Sam Carchidi of the Philadelphia Inquirer took a look back at the trade of one-time Flyers Captain Mike Richards to Los Angeles in exchange for Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn and a second-round pick.
"In L.A., we needed to move forward and push things a little bit," said Hextall. "We had guys who were ready to push it, but we just had that one missing ingredient."
Richards brought grit, Hextall said.
"We needed his leadership; we needed another [two-way] player and someone who could play on the penalty kill and the power play," he said.
Hextall maintains that trading younger players like Schenn and Simmonds was not a decision he and the other members of the front office made easily.
"That almost killed us, to be honest," Hextall said. "You hate giving up young players. It was a hard deal to make."
Both sides seem to have prospered from the deal, with the Flyers receiving better statistical production from Simmonds and Schenn than the Kings have gotten from Richards, but with the Kings adding two notches to their Stanley Cup belt.
Now in Philadelphia, Simmonds, who is a team-best plus-5 with five goals, said that playing his old team no longer matters to him.
"I've been a Flyer longer than I was a King, so it's old news now," he said, later adding that he has "a lot of buddies on the team" and that he was excited to face them.
Simmonds has developed into one of the NHL's better power forwards, allowing the Flyers to jettison expensive veteran winger Scott Hartnell in the offseason.
"I got a different opportunity when I came to Philadelphia, and I just tried to seize the opportunity that was given to me by Lavy [coach Peter Laviolette], and it seems the organization has faith in me," said Simmonds, who scored a career-high 29 goals last season. "Obviously, I go out there and give it my all every night. I don't really think of what could have happened on the other end."
