Former Flyers coach Dave Hakstol was never the disaster here he was made out to be. He’s proving that in Seattle.

Sometimes sports and sports coverage are a hindsight business. A coach learns. An athlete develops. A team goes on a run.

In turn, the truth — and our perception of the truth — changes. Jalen Hurts can’t be a franchise quarterback … until he becomes a franchise quarterback. Tyrese Maxey can’t heave a basketball into the bay from 22 feet … until he becomes one of the NBA’s better three-point shooters. Doug Pederson is the worst head coaching hire in NFL history … until he’s standing at midfield, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy.

Dave Hakstol has undergone that same kind of evolution, and his tenure as the Flyers’ head coach should be undergoing that same kind of reappraisal. Here, he is on the whole regarded as one of the many mistakes that former general managers Ron Hextall and Chuck Fletcher committed. One could see him as just one member of a succession of men behind the bench — Peter Laviolette, Craig Berube, Scott Gordon, Alain Vigneault, Mike Yeo — who couldn’t rescue the Flyers from the organization’s salary-cap and player-personnel failures.

In so many ways, Hakstol came to be considered as a bigger controversy and a bigger mistake than those other hires/fires/promotions, just because he was the outsider and outlier among them. He had no previous connection to the Flyers. He had never coached in the NHL before. He had spent the previous 11 years in charge of the University of North Dakota’s program, which made him … oh, no! … a college guy.

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Not anymore. He’s the head coach of the Seattle Kraken, who are in their second season of existence. Who collected 100 points and reached the playoffs. Who booted the defending Stanley Cup champions — the Colorado Avalanche — out of the first round. Who are tied at one win apiece in their Western Conference semifinal series against the Dallas Stars. Hakstol was named, on Friday night, a finalist for the Jack Adams Award for the NHL’s coach of the year. The honor was his sheepskin.

“He’s a huge reason why we’ve done well,” Kraken forward Jordan Eberle told The Athletic last month. “Anytime you get a group of 20 brand-new individuals, 25 brand-new guys together, and you’re able to make the playoffs, I think that’s a credit to the management. It’s a credit to the coaches and obviously a credit to the players. He’s a part of that. He’s done a really good job of bringing our group together and putting guys in situations where they can succeed and also identifying the strengths of our group and then playing towards that.”

As an expansion team, the Kraken entered the league in 2021 with their decks already cleared, which gave GM Ron Francis, his scouting staff, and Hakstol the opportunity to build the roster from the bottom up. The result is a team that this season scored the third-most goals, had the most takeaways, had the sixth-fewest giveaways, and surrendered the fourth-fewest scoring chances in the NHL. Those statistics speak to a club that plays disciplined hockey, that holds on to the puck, and that will be a tough out in this postseason. Those statistics speak to a club that heeds its head coach.

Which, if you know anything about Hakstol’s tenure with the Flyers, would at first seem ironic. Because he lacked NHL experience, he admittedly gave the veterans on those teams more trust and ice time than he did the younger players who, at the time, promised to be the keys to the organization’s future. He could come down on the kids, and they were less likely to balk because they wielded less power and influence within the locker room and the organization. He benched Shayne Gostisbehere. He benched Travis Konecny. He didn’t have the credibility yet, even in his own mind, to do much more.

“I didn’t know everything,” he said during a lengthy interview during the summer of 2018. “I’d never been in the NHL. I knew exactly who I am and what I am and what I want and what I believe in and where I want to end up, but I hadn’t coached a day in the NHL. So you’ve got to have a little humility there and do a hell of a lot of listening and trust good people. I didn’t know everything because I hadn’t done it. Do I know a heck of a lot more now, three years later? Would I do something different on day one, knowing what I know today? Yeah, probably. But you don’t have that luxury.”

But here’s where the hindsight becomes relevant and revelatory. Hakstol was the Flyers’ head coach for three full seasons. They qualified for the postseason twice in that time — and have qualified once since he left. Claude Giroux, Jake Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, Ivan Provorov, Gostisbehere: Each of them had his most productive season, the highest point total of his career, under Hakstol.

Take a minute, fire up Hockey-Reference.com, and look back at Hakstol’s first team here, in 2015-16. His two goaltenders were Steve Mason and Michal Neuvirth. His top two defensemen were Gostisbehere, who was a rookie, and Mark Streit, who was 38. That team — that team — made the playoffs, which means that season ought to go down as the single greatest achievement by any Flyers head coach since they reached the Stanley Cup Final under Laviolette in 2010.

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That’s not a high bar, to be sure. But with every day that passes since then, with every victory that moves the Seattle Kraken closer to a Stanley Cup, the picture fills out and grows clearer. In a decade-plus full of disasters for the Flyers, hiring Dave Hakstol wasn’t one. No, it was never one at all.