Boston Bruins Hire Sports Lawyer Peter Chiarelli as General Manager

The Boston Bruins are set to hire Attorney Peter Chiarelli as their new general manager. Chiarelli, 41, has been assistant general manager of the Ottawa Senators. He has an interesting background for those who aspire to front office jobs. In 1987, he received a B.A. in economics from Harvard, where he was captain of the Crimson hockey team. After college, he played pro hockey in Europe and then returned to become a law student at the University of Ottawa Law School, from where he graduated in 1993. After law school, he was a player agent, and he represented a number of hockey players in contract negotiations.

In 1999, he shifted over to management, and was hired by the Senators as their director of legal relations. Over the next five years, he impressed the Senators with his hockey insight, and was promoted to assistant general manager in 2004. As assistant G.M., he worked on contract negotiations, salary arbitration, player transactions, and personnel matters. In other words, he took a "legal job" with the Senators and morphed it into a player personnel job, and he's now the G.M. of the Boston Bruins. Granted, Chiarelli had a distinguished collegiate career in his sport and he played it professionally, but perhaps his story is an example of how one can use a law degree to become a player agent and also to get into a front office and from there develop an expertise in player personnel matters.

For Bruins fans' reaction to the hiring, check out HFBoards.

Posted in: