If the Bruins are going to go deep in this year’s playoffs, they now have experience and veteran leadership on their side.

Shortly after his one-year extension for the 2010-11 NHL season with the Bruins was made official, Future Hall-of-Fame forward Mark Recchi addressed the media via conference call this afternoon.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to come back. I think the Bruins are again, continuing to go in the right direction.” said Recchi. “And to be part of the Bruins again, it’s going to be something special.”

The decision to remain a Bruin didn’t take the 42-year-old too long to decide.

“Well it happened, basically, for the most part, right after the season. I had some great conversations with Peter [Chiarelli], Claude [Julien] about it and it was dialogued back-and-forth—they wanted me back and I wanted to come back and we started going from there. I wasn’t that hard to be honest with you.”

Recchi was to become an unrestricted free-agent on Jul. 1, so the quick re-signing of No. 28 is a nice sigh of relief. Last season, Recchi didn’t ink an extension until Jul. 2, 2009—Day 2 of NHL’s free-agency date.

“Last year was more the organization trying to figure out what they were going to do. More than it was just me waiting until the end.” said Recchi. “Peter had a lot more things going on last year at this time and he needed more time to figure cap-wise dollar-wise where things were going to fit.

“This year was a little different he [Chiarelli] was very adamant on bringing what he wants back.” Recchi added “he had a pretty good idea what his team was going to look like; what he wants to do.”

The 22-year NHL veteran and two-time Stanley Cup winner has posted 28-31-59 in 99 career games in Boston, and 9-7-16 totals in 24 post season contests.