(Nice playoff beard, Pete!)

Hot on the heels of their re-signing of forward David Krejci, the Bruins today announced that GM Peter Chiarelli has been inked to a multi-year extension. The new deal guarantees that next year, which was the fourth and final of his initial deal with the B's, will not be his last in Boston (barring an unforeseen firing or resignation, of course).

Nothing but good news here. In what was easily his most productive and successful year with the team, Chiarelli proved he deserves the chance to guide the Bruins for several more years. Just a few items on the list of achievements from this past year: guiding the Bruins to a 53-19-10 finish (116 points) the second-best mark in the NHL; making moves that allowed the B's advanced to the conference semifinals (the first time they've done so since 1999); being named the NHL Executive of the Year from a poll of his peers by The Sporting News; extending the contracts of key contributors Krejci and goalie Tim Thomas.

Among a slew of brilliant moves, Chiarelli was responsible for signing current head coach Claude Julien, who is 94-48-22 in two seasons with the club. He brought Michael Ryder, Blake Wheeler and Stephane Yelle on board last offseason and trusted them to right the ship when every Bruins fan — myself included — was clamoring for him to sign Marian Hossa. He traded for Mark Recchi (and Steve Montador, but we'll let that one slide), who was pivotal down the stretch. More recently, he re-signed Krejci and Thomas to reasonable deals and will hopefully do the same with Phil Kessel in the near future. Outside of the Montador and Manny Fernandez moves, it's pretty tough to find fault with anything he's done since becoming GM in 2006. Hopefully he keeps up the string of good moves; there's no reason to think he can't.