from Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald,

In his time as the Bruins general manager, Peter Chiarelli has usually valued his players’ peace of mind over the loose change that could be won in contract blood feuds.

But in the case of unsigned players Torey Krug and Reilly Smith, he’s so far shown that he’s willing to hold the line. With slightly more than $3 million available to him under the cap, he’s got no other choice, at least not one that’s palatable to him.

The B’s have not budged off their original offers of one-year bridge deals, believed to be worth between $1-$1.5 million. Are the B’s being unfair to Smith and Krug? No, they are simply using the leverage afforded to them by the CBA, just as both players were able to work things to their advantage when they wanted to a burn the first year of their entry level deals by playing less than a handful of NHL games at the end of their respective college careers, with Smith signing with Dallas as a third-round pick and Krug (a highly sought-after undrafted free agent) signing with the Bruins in the spring of 2012.

Hardball is not part of Chiarelli’s game. Not only have his spending tendencies helped transform the Bruins’ image from that of a skinflint operation into one that treats its players more than fairly, Chiarelli seems to truly believe that having his best players squared away financially produces a better on-ice product.

continued