PITTSBURGH  - Being an armchair general manager can be greatly entertaining. At a certain point in wheeling and dealing, fantasy almost becomes logical.

Almost.

It doesn’t always work that way, though. As much as anyone might have an agenda when it comes time to form the future of a franchise, that can quickly change.

Flyers GM Ron Hextall, for example, has “ideas” of what he’d like to do this summer, but, “I had no idea a month before the trade deadline what we were gonna do.”

This summer is a bit different. There’s more time to form those rosters, probably a greater number of teams ready to make trades. There are definitely some objectives for Hextall, though.

Perhaps chief among them is getting younger. The Flyers’ average age is 28.1 years old and the team has a few youngsters they’d like to bring along.

“But, you’ve also got to be realistic,” Hextall warned. “Sometimes you just have to wait. We have to wait for our young players to be ready to play in the NHL. We can’t speed the biological clock up and make Player X 23 when he’s 20. Part of it’s just wait and hopefully players develop quick and we can put them in our line up or put them partway through next season or the season after.”

So the idea of being patient is still very much part of Hextall’s plan. That doesn’t mean he’s not ready to win now.

More From 97.3 ESPN