The Flyers’ Kevin Hayes trade shows the reality of the mess Danny Brière inherited. Buckle up for a long rebuild.

Based on a perusal of social media — and yes, here’s the necessary disclaimer about how fraught it is to draw any conclusions from a perusal of social media — it seems the initial reaction to the Kevin Hayes trade Tuesday is an indication that a lot of Flyers fans still don’t understand how much of a mess the organization has been for the last 10 to 12 years, what it will take to clean up that mess, and how long the cleanup will take.

If you’re lamenting that they got back just a sixth-round pick from the St. Louis Blues for Hayes, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s the market for a lumbering 31-year-old center who’s about to join his fourth team in 10 seasons, would be a second-liner only on a team as overmatched as the Flyers have been and will be, and who has been underwhelming for any coach not named Alain Vigneault. If you’re lamenting that the Flyers are paying him to play somewhere else, I don’t know what to tell you. The Flyers aren’t going to be good for at least three years, and $3.5 million appears to be the going rate to move on from a guy who gave them no leverage in any trade.

Everyone knew Hayes wasn’t going to be back, and his value would only decline the longer the Flyers kept him because it made no sense to play him here. His relationship with coach John Tortorella was broken. (If you’re looking for someone to blame for the Flyers’ lack of leverage in this or any Hayes-related deal, look at Tortorella, who consigned Hayes to the doghouse and was quite outspoken about keeping him there.) And even if Hayes and Tortorella got along well, it wouldn’t make sense to have Hayes take a roster spot away from a younger player with a possible future here.

As for the length of the rebuild, it’s understandable that fans are impatient. But the fact that the Flyers piddled around for so many years, not really breaking it down, not really going all in, doesn’t mean that Danny Brière and Keith Jones can simply press a button that says LUDICROUS SPEED and zoom through all the moves and mistakes they’ll make before they get it right — if they get it right.

A former Philadelphia general manager whose name rhymes with “Bam Pinky” liked to say that it doesn’t matter how much you want to go to battle. If your enemy has bazookas and you have slingshots, you’ll lose. You need to get bazookas first, no matter how long it takes. The Flyers have lots of slingshots. It’s going to take a long time for them to stock their armory.