Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli was named Sporting News Executive of the Year. The award is voted on by 39 coaches and executive from around the NHL.
If Chiarelli wants to repeat as Executive of the Year next year, he has a lot of work ahead of him this summer
Of course, he created most of those headaches he has to deal with this off-season. The more I think about it, the less credit I give to PC as the "Architect of the Bruins". A lot of the pieces were already in place before he got here and he has made some bad moves in the past few years. The award was for this year, so I will just focus on his moves this season. The Ryder trade worked out great. The Recchi deal was pretty solid. The Montador deal was marginal at best. The Andrew Alberts deal was a necessary move that was set up by past decisions, but he probably could have got more of a return. The move that will probably make or break Chiarelli's legacy in Boston is his decision to sign Tim Thomas to a 4 year, $20 million contract extension. According to Kevin Paul Dupont, Chiarelli has roughly between $8 million and $10 million to sign at least 5 players this offseason. Either Kessel or Krejci will eat up roughly half that money, so that does not leave PC with much room to manuever. If Chiarelli can find a way to keep Krejci AND Kessel, then I say he deserves the Executive of the Year Award. Congrats on the award PC and good luck getting yourself out of this cap mess in the off-season.