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Hurley: B's Right To Fire Chiarelli, But Success Should Define GM's Tenure

BOSTON (CBS) -- Peter Chiarelli put the Boston Bruins at a competitive disadvantage for the 2014-15 season. That is why he is currently unemployed.

You can word it any way you'd like. You can say that he went "all in" to win a Cup last season. You can say that he "misjudged" the salary cap ceiling when trying to plan his roster. You can either excuse him for it or you can condemn him for it. But either way, Chiarelli hurt the Bruins' chances to contend this past season, and that is why he was fired.

In that sense, the Bruins were 100 percent justified to relieve the GM of his duties on Wednesday. In a city where hockey is as big as it's been since the days of Bobby Orr, in a building that offers some of the most-expensive tickets in the entire NHL, and for an organization that has spared no expense to build a championship contender every year, taking a year off is just not going to be acceptable.

That is why Peter Chiarelli was fired on Wednesday. Charlie Jacobs said in January that missing the playoffs would be "unacceptable," and he meant it. Finishing the season as a playoff pretender was, in ownership's eyes, a colossal waste of money. Chiarelli had to pay the price for it, and though numerous players underperformed, it would be hard to argue that the GM wasn't most at fault.

With all of that being said, Wednesday's firing should not be the lasting memory of Chiarelli's tenure in Boston.

When Chiarelli was hired in 2006, the Bruins franchise was in a bad place. They had entered the 2004 lockout as one of the stronger teams in the league, boasting a roster that included Joe Thornton and Calder-winning goaltender Andrew Raycroft. Under Mike Sullivan, they won the division and earned a No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, but they blew a 3-1 series lead in the first round of the playoffs to the Montreal Canadiens.

Following the lockout, the Bruins essentially bottomed out. In November, when the Bruins had a losing record, the team traded captain Joe Thornton to San Jose for minor parts. (sorry, Marco Sturm. You were all right.) A 20-year-old Patrice Bergeron was a bright spot for Boston, as was the play of little-known netminder Tim Thomas, but the team finished in last place in the division.

The Bruins fired the general manager, and they had no captain. Chiarelli wasn't exactly inheriting a complete hockey team, and he orchestrated a grand hockey revival in Boston.

Yet over the course of the next several years, he made a series of smart decisions that allowed the Bruins to climb step-by-step out of the Eastern Conference cellar all the way to the top of the league. After whiffing on Dave Lewis, he found the right man for the head coaching job in Claude Julien, who is 351-192-79 with Boston.

After seeing firsthand what Zdeno Chara brings to the ice, Chiarelli signed him to a long-term deal and made him captain. Chiarelli had a vision for a playmaking star like Marc Savard playing a big role in Boston, and he shelled out big bucks for him, too. Over time, Chiarelli showed faith in a journeyman goalie named Tim Thomas, and it paid off in a big way.

Chiarelli probably should be put on trial for grand larceny after some of the trades he pulled leading up to the Cup victory. Nathan Horton, arguably the Bruins' Conn Smythe runner-up in 2011, was acquired with Gregory Campbell in exchange for Dennis Wideman and some draft picks. Mark Recchi, the veteran leader who served as the final and critical piece of the championship puzzle, was acquired for Matt Lashoff and Martins Karsums -- two players who would go on to play a combined 46 games in the NHL. Dennis Seidenberg, the shutdown No. 2 defenseman in the 2011 postseason, was acquired for Byron Bitz and Craig Weller. Bitz would go on score two goals with four assists in the rest of his career, while Weller never again played in the NHL.

These were all steals, and before the rest of the league could catch on, the Bruins were Stanley Cup champions.

But of course, he rewarded most of his players with long-term contracts, paying them for past performances rather than future output. That's not a path to success in a salary cap league.

And that cap is what finally did in Chiarelli this past year. After Jarome Iginla hit all of his bonuses, the Bruins were hit with a $4.2 million cap charge this year, thereby preventing them from making any significant signings at all in free agency last summer. The Bruins might have been able to recover from that, but it was the cap-forced trade of Johnny Boychuk prior to the start of the season that delivered a blow from which the team never recovered.

It was that Boychuk trade that ultimately looks like the worst mark on Chiarelli. This was a defenseman who due to injuries elsewhere had just ascended to a top-pairing role and thrived. He played 20-plus hard minutes nightly on Boston's blue line, and he rarely erred. Now he was 30 years old, entering a contract year, presumably about to play the best hockey of his career so that he could earn a multi-year contract that would secure his finances for the rest of his life. Yet Chiarelli traded him away for nothing more than draft picks, solely due to mismanagement of the salary cap.

That is a colossal failure. And though the reasons were multiple -- Chara's injury, Seidenberg's slow recovery -- for the Bruins dropping from second in goals allowed to eighth, the removal of Boychuk was the most significant.

The trading away of Tyler Seguin certainly looks like the biggest stain on Chiarelli's resume, but the GM did not act alone in that decision. That was a trade that was made by the entirety of the front office, not just Chiarelli. There is no doubt that he did not receive a proper return for arguably the best young goal scorer in the NHL, for which Chiarelli has rightfully received criticism, but the trade in and of itself does not fall squarely on Chiarelli's shoulders.

Nevertheless, when the Bruins were floundering outside of the playoff picture in January, Charlie Jacobs issued a decree. Yet instead of putting everyone "on notice," why didn't the organization just fire Chiarelli before the deadline? They could have sold some decently valuable pieces in exchange for prospects and draft picks, thereby improving the franchise for the long term. Jacobs' staking his fate on a playoff berth was short-sighted; if Chiarelli was bad enough to fire on April 15, he was surely bad enough to fire on Feb. 15. That misfire, as it were, falls on the organization.

Regardless, what happened has happened. Are the Bruins better off today without Chiarelli than they were yesterday with him? A case could be made. For all that Chiarelli had done well in the first seven or so years on the job, the poor decisions had begun to pile up. Depending on whom the Bruins hire to replace Chiarelli -- whether it's a promotion for Don Sweeney or if it's an outside hire remains to be seen -- but perhaps the team will be in a better position with a leader who has no emotional ties to the current "core" of players and the head coach.

As evidenced by the results of this past season, a significant shake-up is necessary. Chiarelli's firing represents the first step in that process.

So yes, the Bruins had reason to fire Chiarelli. The GM hurt the team in 2014-15, and the Bruins can be in an improved competitive position if they make a smart hire to fill the role. He failed this year, but when grading his entire performance in charge of the team, and when factoring in the state of the franchise when he took the helm, Chiarelli's time in Boston ought to be remembered as one of the most successful stretches in franchise history. They went 386-233-85, won a Presidents' Trophy, saw players win Vezinas and Selkes and a Norris, saw the coach win a Jack Adams, and most importantly of all, they broke a 39-year championship drought by winning the Stanley Cup.

One bad season should not erase that.

Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.

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