Jackets' select ex-Flyers' coach

Ken Hitchcock was hired as coach to succeed interim skipper Gary Agnew.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- The Columbus Blue Jackets, seeking an experienced hand to develop their young players, hired veteran Ken Hitchcock as coach Wednesday.
Hitchcock, fired this season by the Philadelphia Flyers, was to be formally introduced as the team's fifth head coach at a news conference today. Team president and general manager Doug MacLean announced Hitchcock's hiring shortly before the team took the ice against St. Louis.
Hitchcock said what appealed to him about the Blue Jackets was more than their core of young players.
"It's that, but it's also that they have veteran players who have won the Stanley Cup before, guys who know what it takes," he said. "They've got people like Sergei Fedorov, Adam Foote and Fredrik Modin who know what it takes to win."
Hitchcock was asked if he would be behind the bench when the Blue Jackets play his former team, the Flyers, Friday afternoon in Philadelphia.
"You bet," he said twice.
Replaces Agnew
The 54-year-old Hitchcock replaces interim coach Gary Agnew, an assistant to Gerard Gallant who was elevated to the top job after Gallant was fired Nov. 14.
"He's a winner. He's a guy that pushes people to the limit. And we have a lot of guys that need to be pushed," MacLean said during the first intermission of the Blue Jackets game.
MacLean confirmed that the other finalist was Andy Murray, who went 215-202-63-7 as coach of the Los Angeles Kings from 1999-06.
Hitchcock's new contract runs through the 2008-09 season and is believed to be in the range of the 1.2 million annually he received from the Flyers.
Worst record in NHL
The Blue Jackets came into Wednesday night's game with the worst record in the NHL at 5-13-1-0 and riding a six-game losing skid.
Columbus has had a reputation for being a talented but soft team which features young standouts such as Rick Nash and Nikolai Zherdev. Nash scored 41 goals during the 2003-04 season to share the Maurice Richard Trophy as the NHL's leading goal-scorer with Calgary's Jarome Iginla and Atlanta's Ilya Kovalchuk.
Zherdev has scored some of the most photogenic goals in the team's brief history but both he and Nash are not considered two-way players willing to help out on defense and in the neutral zone.
Despite a roster that also includes proven pros Fedorov, Modin, Foote, David Vyborny and Anson Carter, the Blue Jackets are last in the NHL in goals this season with 40 in their 19 games.
XWednesday's game was not completed in time for today's edition.