Pittsburgh general manager Ray Shero remains one of the best in the game, and he proved that once again over the last couple of days. The Pens acquired forward Brenden Morrow from the Dallas Stars on Sunday. They followed that up by getting bigger and tougher on the blue line on Monday when they acquired defenseman Douglas Murray from the San Jose Sharks.
The prevailing thought now is that it’s on the rest of the Eastern Conference to answer Shero’s serve, and the Bruins are among the teams that many expect to be competitive in the days leading up to the April 3 trade deadline. General manager Peter Chiarelli is aware of what’s going on, but he says the Pens’ moves don’t necessarily force the B’s to do anything.
“I certainly don’t gauge our strategy on what other teams are doing, but Pittsburgh is a very good team and they’ve made themselves better,” Chiarelli told ESPN.com. “It doesn’t accelerate anything, you can’t force anything; you try to find a fit and you try to improve your team. The Penguins made themselves better. We’ll see in the coming week in a bit how other teams make themselves better, and we plan on doing the same thing.”
The Bruins were reportedly in on Morrow, and according to some reports, the B’s made a late charge to acquire the veteran forward. That obviously didn’t work out, but the Bruins have been linked to other players, including Calgary forward Jarome Iginla.
Those are all rumors at this point, though. What we do know is that Chiarelli will do all he can to make his team better before the deadline.
