Sam Hinkie wrote a letter to Flyers fans praising their ‘Process.’ We got a copy of it. (Wink, wink.)

To all fans of the Philadelphia Flyers:

I hope this letter finds you well. I served the 76ers at their pleasure for 34 months, from May 2013 to April 2016. What I hope to accomplish here is to give you insight into what has transpired with your hockey club in recent years. Many of you have followed the Flyers for several decades, and I hope this letter provides a deeper understanding of what you are witnessing. Accordingly, you should anticipate some mild optimism here, sprinkled with a healthy dose of necessary skepticism about things that general manager Danny Brière and team president Keith Jones might have done wrong.

But enough of the investor-letter formalities. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE PROCESSING, SUCKAS?

I kid. I kid. I must say, though, that I do find the change of heart among many members of your tribe to be interesting … and quite ironic.

» READ MORE: Flyers fans must be very, very patient

I suppose, before proceeding, that I should explain what prompted me to write to you. I suspect you already know. On Monday, the Flyers made a fairly significant trade, acquiring a talented young forward named Trevor Zegras from the Anaheim Ducks for two draft picks and a player, Ryan Poehling, who spent most of his time with the Flyers on their third or fourth line.

This was, to put it as bluntly as I can, the kind of trade I would have tried to make. It’s similar to the Flyers’ decision, in 2023, to take Matvei Michkov with the seventh pick in the draft, to exploit other clubs’ fear that Michkov either would be stuck in Russia for years or wouldn’t come to North America at all. These moves have all the hallmarks of our thinking back in 2013, 2014, and 2015, when we were laying the groundwork for what we hoped would be a long period of success for the Sixers.

An organization that is striving to be outstanding — and to be outstanding over a lengthy period of time — has to recognize an opportunity to acquire high-level talent, and it has to be willing to separate itself from the herd. The Michkov pick was daring, and the potential benefits of the Zegras trade, in this context, are obvious. It was a classic low-risk, high-reward gambit. Zegras may never develop into the elite scorer he was supposed to be in Anaheim, but a change of scenery might be just what he needs. He was the ninth pick in the 2019 draft. He had two 60-plus-point seasons before his production fell off because of injuries and spotty play.

“That’s why he was available in the first place,” Brière said. “Top-six talents are very rarely available around the NHL. We felt that was a risk worth taking for us. … We feel good about it because of what he’s shown in the past, and we hope he can find that magic again.”

If Danny’s preaching, I’m here to say, Amen. The whole point of “The Process” was to increase the odds that the Sixers would acquire enough genuinely great players to create a championship team. That’s why, when I arrived in Philadelphia, we considered the few excellent, established players already on the roster as “assets” first and foremost. That’s why we hoarded picks and tried to maximize our chances of drafting potential superstars.

» READ MORE: Hiring Rick Tocchet shows the Flyers know who they are and how far they have to go.

And, yes, that’s why we tanked for three years.

Which brings me to that delicious sense of irony I mentioned earlier. There was much criticism of our approach from sports fans throughout the Delaware Valley, and a large portion of that criticism came from … well … you. A person didn’t have to spend much time in or around Philly to know that Flyers fans, and some people within the organization itself, regarded our approach as distasteful at best and dishonorable at worst. Their team maintained its dignity. Their team played to win. Their team didn’t tear itself down to build itself back up again.

And here we are.

Talk about a culture change.

Look, I made my share of mistakes. I could have traded for or drafted players other than Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor. I could have spoken publicly and answered questions more frequently instead of having Brett Brown bear the burden of acting as the franchise’s spokesperson. When I resigned, I could have suggested to Jerry Colangelo, Hey, man, anyone but your nepo-baby son.

Still, I have to admit that I’ve been chuckling to myself quite a bit lately. I understand that Danny and Jonesy were respected athletes and figures here before they became executives, and I was an outsider, a neophyte GM who was a mystery to just about everyone in town. So they’re going to receive a measure of grace, a benefit of the doubt, that I didn’t. That’s the way it goes. No complaints here. I appreciate that so many of you are excited about the Flyers’ future. But there’s no getting around this reality: That excitement mostly has been born of the organization’s strategy to be … shall we say … not very good.

The Flyers haven’t finished better than sixth in the eight-team Metropolitan Division in any of the last five seasons. Their goaltending situation the last two years has been so bad, the worst in the league by a mile, that someone could be forgiven for thinking that the Flyers were tanking on the sly. Hey, if these totally inexperienced, completely overwhelmed goalies play well, that’s awesome! And if they don’t, that’s just the breaks of the game. If anything, the primary complaint about the organization lately had been that, by having John Tortorella as its coach, it wasn’t trying hard enough to lose. I guess after all those years of mediocrity, of never being good enough to matter or bad enough to rebuild fully, all of you were ready to try a fresh approach.

Sounds familiar.

Thanks for this opportunity to share my thoughts with you, and thanks for providing validation that the journey the Sixers and I embarked on — back in those halcyon days of Hollis Thompson, Tim Frazier, and Tony Wroten — was the right course of action. (For what it’s worth, I’ll always think of Aleksei Kolosov as your Furkan Aldemir.) We are kindred team-building spirits, and I couldn’t be more pleased and flattered. As I hope you can see now, I am not a weasel. I never was. I was just ahead of the curve.

Best of luck,

Sam Hinkie