Overall, this is a solid move for the Boston Bruins. Chiarelli definitely has his glaring strengths and weaknesses, but when you win the Stanley Cup and come within 4 periods of another, you deserve some level of job security. As a writer, Chiarelli is the perfect GM for me because it can be so easy to second guess his moves and overall plan.
Chiarelli’s biggest weakness by far is his drafting. He has been downright horrible since he has become GM of the Bruins. Now, I know some of you hardcore Believers are saying to yourself, “Wait a minute, the Boston Bruins have at ton of home grown talent on the team between Bergeron, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, David Krejci, and the acquisition of Tuukka Rask”. And you are correct, except that Chiarelli had exactly nothing to do with any of those players becoming Boston Bruins. They were all either drafted or acquired by the Bruins during the much-lamented Mike O’Connell era. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not going to say that the O’Connell era was all sunshine and rainbows. I was calling for his head long before Jeremy Jacobs had the guts to fire him only when things hit rock bottom. However, he does deserve credit for this young Bruins nucleus, especially that Rask trade with Toronto, I mean Andrew Raycroft for Tuukka Rask and a pick? That has to go up on the pantheon great Bruins trades. I’ll get back to the trade talk later.
Now, back to Chiarelli’s crappy drafting. Do you want to guess how many Chiarelli draft picks played in the 2013 Stanley Cup Finals? If you guessed ZERO you would be right! Remember, Torrey Krug was a rookie free agent and not a draft pick. I don’t think I need to run down the list of Jordan Carons and Joe Colbornes and other flops that he has taken with his picks. He traded his most heralded pick, Tyler Seguin this offseason and the jury is still out on Dougie Hamilton who lost a spot in the defensive rotation to the aforementioned Krug. It seems as though the Bruins have already addressed the issue by firing the former Director of Scouting Wayne Smith and replaced him with Keith Gretzky (yes, the brother of Wayne) who has a more European focus. Hopefully, the Bruins will start seeing some improvement on draft day.
Chiarelli has been very good at moving pieces around via trades. He brought over some major contributors to the Bruins success, especially Dennis Seidenberg, Matt Bartkowski, Nathan Horton, Gregory Campbell (all from the Florida Panthers acquired in a couple of different deals), Daniel Paille and Johnny Boychuck. His one stinker of a trade so far was the Tomas Kaberle trade, but then again, who knows if the Bruins win the Stanley Cup without him in 2011, so I am willing to give him a pass on that one considering most of his other trades look great so far, except for the Kessel trade. For me, the jury is still out on the Phil Kessel trade Tyler Seguin has already been traded and Dougie Hamilton still has a lot of growing up to do.
Peter Chiarelli seems to have a pretty good working relationship with President Cam Neely even if they don’t always see eye to eye on everything. Chiarelli and Claude Julien will always be linked together in my mind and seem to have a similar sense of the way a hockey team should be run. It will be a fun ride and I can’t wait to second guess Chiarelli for the next 5 years or so.
@BruinsBeliever 