PHILADELPHIA -- With his team in a stretch during which it plays three games in nine days, Boston Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli has been able to do some work for his other job, assistant general manager for Canada for the 2014 Winter Olympics. He's also been able to make a couple of scouting trips, including a stop at Wells Fargo Center on Friday to watch the Philadelphia Flyers and Phoenix Coyotes.

"We had a game [Thursday], but we had five days between games prior to that," Chiarelli told NHL.com. "It allowed me to get to a game in Pittsburgh, and we [the Bruins] are in Columbus [Saturday afternoon], so I'll see this game [Friday] and then hook up with our team. We've tried to coordinate our schedules to catch other games in addition to our own games."

Chiarelli said scouting for the Olympic team is a bit different than if he was scouting for an NHL game, mostly because the Olympics will be played in Sochi, Russia, on international-size ice.

"The natural thing is skating," he said. "so you want to see how their skating is. At this level in their careers it usually doesn't progress. It goes through stages so you want to keep an eye on their skating."

Among the players Chiarelli said he's watching is Flyers captain Claude Giroux. Giroux was unable to attend Canada's summer orientation camp due to a finger injury sustained during a golf outing, but Chiarelli said Giroux's absence in no way affected his Olympic chances.

"I say that he's a guy we have to look at not because he missed the orientation camp," Chiarelli said. "It was a good benefit for these guys to come in and be able to hang out and kind of see what the plan is, the plan of attack. That doesn't impact us deciding whether Claude is on the team or not."

Chiarelli said he and the rest of Canada's Olympic management staff, led by executive director Steve Yzerman, will have at least two more meetings leading up to the official selection of the team that will go to Sochi.

"We've got a couple meetings set up and we're going to have conference calls," Chiarelli said. "We've got a meeting set up this month and again next month, then after that, it's as-needed."

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