The hockey world is abuzz this morning over the news of the struggling Philadelphia Flyers firing head coach Ken Hitchcock and accepting the resignation of GM Bob Clarke.

Given the club's poor start this news wasn't unexpected but still rocked the hockey world.

For the Flyers, it's the end of an era.

Clarke was the club's general manager for 13 seasons, during most of that time he turned the Flyers into a perennial Cup contender with savvy trades, smart drafting and expensive free agent signings.

Unfortunately for Clarke, he misjudged how much the NHL game would change under both a restrictive salary cap and the new rules opening up the offensive side of the game.

He signed plodding blueliners Derian Hatcher and Mike Rathje last year to expensive, long term contracts that proved unmoveable when both blueliners struggled to adapt to the new game. He allowed puckmoving d-man Kim Johnsson to get away via free agency, and his trading for Kyle Calder did nothing to bolster team speed or offense. Petr Nedved turned out to be an expensive, over-the-hill veteran who did nothing to improve the club.

Worse, Clarke's achilles heel throughout his tenure as GM was his inability to bring in a strong goaltender who could carry the club to the Cup during the good years and carry the team through the bad years.

Those were just a few of Clarke's problems, which because of the salary cap he was unable to spend his way out of as he'd done in years past.

Unfortunately for Hitchcock, one of the most respected and experienced NHL coaches, he also got caught in the crossfire. He did the best he could with the team Clarke had built for him, but as was painfully obvious both in last spring's playoffs and early this season, it was a roster that was too big and slow to adapt to the changing NHL game.

Don't expect Hitchcock to stay unemployed for too long, as he'll probably land with another NHL team that could use the benefit of his talent within the next year or two.

The same cannot be said for Clarke, who became the most significant general manager to fall victim to the "new NHL".

Clarke's replacement will have his hands full, but he'll have a good corps of talent to rebuild around. Antero Niittymaki could finally become the Flyers goalie of the future, defenseman Joni Pitkanen is (when healthy) becoming one of the better offensive blueliners in the league, Simon Gagne is an established young scorer while there's plenty of promise in Jeff Carter and Mike Richards.

Just don't expect a massive turnaround overnight, Flyers fans. There's a lot of work to be done to turn this team back into a perennial playoff team again.