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Keith Jones<\/a> didn\u2019t watch. He couldn\u2019t watch. <\/p>\n Since becoming the Flyers\u2019 president in 2023, he has never watched his team compete in a shootout. He can\u2019t take it. Too nerve-wracking. Pretty ironic for a guy who had watched and commented on dozens of shootouts during his two decades analyzing NHL games on TV, who has always seemed so loose and relaxed and ready with a self-deprecating one-liner. <\/p>\n But on Monday night, he wasn\u2019t on TV, and he wasn\u2019t relaxed. He was in the upper reaches of Xfinity Mobile Arena, and the Flyers\u2019 first playoff berth in six years was on the line, and he was pacing in a hallway just outside the booth where he used to call games.<\/p>\n He heard a roar from the arena crowd and stopped pacing. Tyson Foerster<\/a> had just scored to give the Flyers the lead over the Carolina Hurricanes. Jones noticed where he was standing. On the wall in front of him was a photograph of Danny Bri\u00e8re and Brian Boucher<\/a>, celebrating a shootout victory over the New York Rangers in the last regular-season game of the 2009-10 season \u2014 a victory that put the Flyers in the playoffs, where they advanced to the Stanley Cup Final. Now Bri\u00e8re was the Flyers\u2019 general manager, and Boucher was in the TV booth, and Jones heard another loud cheer go up, this time when goaltender Dan Vlada\u0159 made the save that clinched the Flyers\u2019 3-2 win<\/a>. Only then could he assume the best. Only then could he relax.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: The Flyers\u2019 high point as a franchise happened 50 years ago against the Soviets. A new doc tells the full story.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s drama,\u201d he said late Monday night over his cell phone as he drove home from the arena, \u201cand we certainly lived it in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n Of all the people who contributed to the Flyers\u2019 taking this modest but significant step forward, from Bri\u00e8re to coach Rick Tocchet<\/a>, from Vlada\u0159 to the players in front of him, no one had taken a greater risk or had more to gain or lose than Jones. He had become a respected voice within the sport throughout his broadcasting career at NBC and Turner. He had been a faithful and funny sidekick on the WIP Morning Show. He had a pair of cushy gigs that would have kept him reasonably happy but never would have presented the same challenge that overseeing the personnel department of an NHL franchise would.<\/p>\n So he went after that job and got it<\/a>, and he had to learn to live with the divide within the reaction to his hire. There were the hockey lifers who knew that, underneath the affable personality and the quick wit, Jones might be smart and savvy enough to succeed. And there were the casual fans and the cynical, scarred Flyers fanatics who couldn\u2019t believe that the organization\u2019s new president was a guy who had spent most of his mornings making fart jokes on a sports talk show.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s who I was,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere to hide. I was on the radio for 21 years. But life is a beautiful thing. I put everything I have into every job I have, and I\u2019m hoping the same type of approach will work well in the job I\u2019m in now.\u201d<\/p>\n The approach. An appropriate word, because it has been the Flyers\u2019 approach under Bri\u00e8re and Jones that has been the biggest source of public debate around the franchise since they took command. The Flyers didn\u2019t go all-in on tanking the way that the 76ers did under Sam Hinkie, and the fear from many of their fans was that the team would never quite be bad enough to maximize its odds of drafting a future superstar or two. With the arrival of Porter Martone<\/a>, the improvement of Jamie Drysdale<\/a> and Trevor Zegras<\/a>, the return of Tyson Foerster, and the recent revival of Matvei Michkov<\/a>, those fears have subsided, at least for now.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are teams that have [tanked], and it\u2019s worked for some,\u201d Jones said. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re better immediately. There are instances where it takes 10 years. Time will tell how this works, but we believe we have a formula to get it done.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a little bit of reinforcement that we\u2019re on the right path, but remember: We had a poor season last year and traded away pieces at the deadline and weakened our team again like we did the year previously. So it wasn\u2019t like we were trying to win. We weren\u2019t going out thinking we had a chance to win a Stanley Cup. We weren\u2019t trading draft picks to add veteran players to get into the playoffs. We were actually removing those pieces and adding other prospects, and I think that\u2019s where we\u2019re really going to see a benefit in this process.\u201d<\/p>\n