It was just one of many interviews Jones and Briere have done in the aftermath of their introductions on Friday at Wells Fargo Center. In case you missed one or more of them, here's some key takeaways from some of the various discussions. They've done so many that it's hard to keep up, so we'll have more for you in the coming days, but here are the first two of the junket.
Tuesday, May 16 - Keith Jones on the WIP Morning Show
Jones entered his old stomping grounds to a literal standing ovation, even though it was just three people. He took a seat across the table from his old spot in the studio, which is where Jon Ritchie now sits.
"Why is Jon in my seat?" he said. "I'm not used to talking over here."
Decked out in a blue hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans, DeCamara was happy that Jones didn't appear to have stepped into snappy-dressed executive mode.
"I'm Jonesy," he laughed. "I'm not gonna be Keith. So please don't refer to me as Keith."
Jones had talked at length to this point about how his candidacy for the president's post was kept quiet until the day before the Flyers announced it. He hadn't told hardly anybody about his involvement because he didn't want to be caught up in it if he hadn't gotten the job, and he dove into a story comparing that to when he was drafted by the Washington Capitals in 1988 under a veil of secrecy.
"I was 19 years old playing Junior B hockey," he recalled, "and at that level, it doesn't happen very often that a scout would pull you aside after a game and say 'hey, we think you might have some potential, we might draft you this summer.' I didn't tell anybody, not even my parents. Because I didn't want them to be disappointed."
Similar to this process, the Capitals kept their interest in Jones quiet - so quiet, in fact, that nobody at the draft knew who he was when the Caps picked him.
"There's a draft list of about 2,000 kids," Jones said. "I wasn't on that list. The Capitals had kept it so secret themselves that they had to call my parents from the draft table and ask 'How old is your son?' Then they said 'great, listen to this.' And they held up the phone and said 'The Washington Capitals select Keith Jones with the 141st pick,' and my mom got to listen to that."
With the most recent bout of secrecy behind him, Jones delved into how this whole thing came about - but also how quickly a life-changing opportunity popped up for him after his time on Angelo Cataldi's morning show crew came to an end shortly after the Super Bowl.
"None of that was in play when the WIP stuff was wrapping up," Jones said. "It was not even in my thought process. I wanted to finish that job with Angelo. He was so great to me. I'm not sitting here today talking about this if it wasn't for Angelo. There's a very good chance I would have left and gone somewhere else and taken whatever job possible that I could have gotten, whether it was coaching at the minor league level for another franchise. Radio was my first job, paid job, after I retired. It was my first contract job after I retired. It was a very important thing for me."
It wasn't long afterward that the Flyers search firm reached out to Jones to gauge his interest in joining the interview process. He "thought about it for about 10 seconds" before saying yes, and the process led to Friday's introduction. It was a case of excellent timing - not only had his time with WIP wrapped up, but Jones's enthusiasm towards the Flyers had just gotten a huge boost.
"I would have been very hesitant to take the job two years ago," he said. "There was not a lot to look forward to. That has changed. A lot of that changed last season in the way that this team played for John Tortorella. I am so thrilled that he is the coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. I would not have been in this position two years ago to think that this would have been an ideal spot to start that type of career. I would have been better off staying in the media. The fact that he's here makes me want to be here. That's how important I think he is to the process. I think he's a guy that gets this city better than most. He understands it, he's lived his life that way, he's a very courageous guy and he's a very good guy."
Jones also touched on Danny Briere and their relationship.
"I've known him for a long time as well. I've appreciated that he wanted to be here; I've appreciated that he chose coming here. He made my job a lot easier in covering the team. He was an outstanding player for the Flyers. He could have left - got lot of money, he doesn't have to be here. He stayed. He went and developed the necessary tools to be a general manager in the National Hockey League. Is he gonna need help? Sure, of course. We all are. But that's why we're all together. It's a unique arrangement."
WIP also took some calls during the segment, and the subject of change was broached - specifically the notion of two former players being in charge, which some fans don't think is the correct way forward.
"A lot of people want change," Jones said. "This is change. This is a lot different than what you've seen before. We're going to do it together. I think we're going to be successful, but it is going to take some time and it is going to take some patience."
Jones also talked about his role tying in the business side of the organization.
"The good news for us and for me - on the business side of things with Valerie Camillo, there's so many great things that have already happened," he said. "We have a very good building. So is the practice rink - it's so different than I was when I was there twenty years ago. It's an incredible thing."
Finally, Jones had a message for the fans, especially those who find the last few years to be unacceptable.
"I talk to the fans all the time and I've always been accessible to talk about those things," he said. "We know what we need to do. They have not liked the Flyers for a while. We want them to love us, and in order to do that we've got a ton of work to do. We have some repairing to do from what's happened in the past, but most importantly we need to bring them along with us, keep them aware of what we're doing, and make sure that we're out there. The Flyer voice has not been out here."
Monday, May 15 - Danny Briere on Sirius/XM Radio
The previous afternoon, Briere joined Oren Koules and Marty Biron for a conversation that was no doubt going to be fun, given that Briere and Biron played together both in Buffalo and in Philadelphia, and Biron is a character.
Biron's first point was a bit of trivia - pointing out that when Briere made his NHL debut on March 19, 1998 for the Phoenix Coyotes, Jones was on the other bench as a member of the Colorado Avalanche and John Tortorella was a Phoenix assistant. Biron suggested Briere find video of him and Jones on the ice and also some clips of Tortorella yelling at him during the game.
"Finding Jonesy on the ice might be a little tougher," Briere said, giving an indication that the traditional good-natured panning of Jones's playing career is still in bounds. That's great, because nobody wants to live in a world where we can't remember that Jones played 37:50 in the Flyers' five-overtime win against Pittsburgh in 2000 without registering a shot on goal.
Biron then asked Briere to go down the path of what he'd been doing between the end of his playing career and this point, stressing that it wasn't like he just showed up one day and became the GM of the Flyers. For background, recall that in 2014, Paul Holmgren gave up the GM title to Ron Hextall and became the president of the Flyers, which for him was also a learning curve - he came over from the hockey side and for the first time had to learn how things worked on the business side of the organization. Later on, Holmgren invited Briere to shadow him on that same path, much to the surprise of several staff members who showed up one Monday for a routine lunchtime staff meeting to see one of the team's biggest stars from the turn of the previous decade sitting among them at the table.
"Since there wasn't anything open on the hockey side, [Holmgren] kind of invited me to learn what he was doing as the team president," Briere said. "So I got to see the behind-the-scenes on the business side, every department from finance to marketing, sales… it was really interesting."
Briere then recalled another fortunate circumstance that developed in 2017, when Comcast Spectacor purchased the Alaska Aces ECHL franchise and relocated it to Portland, Maine to fill a void left by the AHL's Portland Pirates, which moved out the year before.
"They asked me if I wanted to run the franchise, both on the business side and the hockey side," Briere said. "So that was exciting, continuing to learn the business side while also doing the hockey side, building a team, starting from scratch… we had no name, no logo, no colors. So I did that for about five years, and then during the pandemic I started getting involved with player development on the Flyers side. I went back to school at the same time to get a little more knowledge on the business side of things, did a program at Wharton here in Philadelphia. I slowly kind of came up the ranks on the hockey side with the Flyers until they approached me about taking over for Chuck [Fletcher]. So that's how it kind of came about."
Briere went on to discuss what the last couple of months had been like for him since then.
"I had no say in the president search," he said. "I was not involved; I did not have any talks with anyone. All I was told was to act like I was the GM and most likely I would be named the GM once the season was over and we had a little more clarity on the president situation. I couldn't have been happier when I heard it was Keith Jones coming aboard. I've known Jonesy for a while just being around the Philadelphia area, the alumni stuff we've done over the years, listening to him on TV. I'm happy to have him on my side and I'm ecstatic that he's on my team."
In further discussion about the team, Briere talked about the current personnel, including the anticipated return of Cam Atkinson and Sean Couturier and the team's goaltending situation, which came with an indication of Carter Hart being the number one for some years to come. He also delved into the organization's younger players.
"If you look at our group of forwards, there's some guys who took a big step last year," Briere said. "Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Noah Cates, and Morgan Frost are four guys at the top of the list. Tyson Foerster came in for a few games and did really well. Joel Farabee is going to be better than he was last year. You think of the last few years, losing Jake Voracek, losing Claude Giroux, last year not having Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson in the lineup. That's four big pieces of the offense the last few years that weren't there last season. It gives a chance to the other guys to step up and fill those roles, and really know what we have in those players."
Briere and Jones continued to do more interviews over the course of the week. We'll have more summaries for you on those as the week goes on.
