Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli kept a big piece of his championship puzzle in town on Thursday when he signed top-line center David Krejci to a three-year extension worth $15.75 million.
But Krejci is just the sixth Bruins player signed beyond next season. And injured center Marc Savard, who is unlikely to play again, is one of the other five. Krejci joins defensemen Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg and forwards Patrice Bergeron, Rich Peverley and Savard as the only Bruins with deals beyond the 2012-13 season.
Chiarelli will have some tough decisions to make in the coming months, with Chris Kelly, Gregory Campbell, Shawn Thornton, Daniel Paille, Joe Corvo and Johnny Boychuk all scheduled to become unrestricted free agents on July 1 and Tuukka Rask, Benoit Pouliot and Zach Hamill due to be restricted free agents.
It doesn't get any easier the following summer, with Nathan Horton, Tim Thomas and Andrew Ference headed for UFA status and Milan Lucic, Tyler Seguin, Brad Marchand, Jordan Caron and Steven Kampfer set to be RFAs after the 2012-13 campaign. Add in the fact that the league's collective bargaining agreement is up after this season, creating plenty of uncertainty about what the salary cap will be set at going forward, and it's easy to see how challenging the next couple of years will be for Chiarelli.
"We do have a preliminary kind of framework where we try to fit our roster under [the cap]," Chiarelli said. "That's impacted by the uncertain future. [It's] a balance I'm trying to find. In an ideal world you'd like to have everybody back and have everybody happy. I don't know if that's going to happen. We'd like to try and make it happen, but we'll see how the rest of the year unfolds and what happens with the CBA."
Chiarelli has been very proactive in re-signing his own players before they've reached free agency, with the Krejci deal just the latest of a long line of examples in that regard. Chiarelli wouldn't rule out making further deals this season to lock up other key players, though he bristled at the suggestion that committing a $5.25 million cap hit to Krejci would make it difficult to re-sign other key players like Seguin, Lucic and Marchand and remain under the cap.
"I consider David an important RFA," Chiarelli said. "So it's one piece at a time. When we make these decisions we look at the big picture. I haven't lost sight of the big picture. I would anticipate that the players that we want to re-sign, that we're going to try to re-sign them, but David is a huge piece of this puzzle, so that's how we look at that."
Chiarelli is sensitive to how some of the other pending free agents could feel slighted by his first reaching agreements with Krejci and Peverley earlier this season. Chiarelli is also aware that the uncertainty of the future with free agency looming can affect a player's performance, as Krejci admitted was a factor in his early-season struggles this year.
"You heard David say it may have affected him a little bit, and he's not the only player that will say that," Chiarelli said. "I know we have other unrestricted and restricted free agents. I try to be fair and equitable in doing these things and sometimes other players may be left out by not having their deal done now and having to wait. That's a fine balance. That's tough. Especially after you win a Cup, you like your players even more. But I don't worry about free agency that much. I feel that I don't really need a deadline like that and if we do get to that point, we've got the tools to address it."
Chiarelli may feel more beholden to his players after winning a Cup with them, but that championship also makes Boston a much more attractive destination for players. That, in turn, can help keep costs in check in trying to retain as many players as possible under the cap.
"The winning thing is big," Chiarelli said. "When you see a team, when an ownership is committed to winning, it's a fun workplace. So that's big. … We all, myself included, make good money in this business, and we see time can be fleeting when it comes to winning. There's probably always a team out there that will pay more, but I respect players that want to stay and want to win."
That was Krejci's goal in signing his extension. Now it's up to Chiarelli to find a way to keep the rest of the team's core players in Boston.
"I won't stop looking at ways to improve the team," Chiarelli said. "And we won't stop trying to sign our important players."
