One of the questions for the Boston Bruins prior to the start of the 2014-15 season has been answered.

After remaining unsigned for the first two weeks of training camp, the Bruins announced Monday that both Reilly Smith and Torey Krug inked matching one-year contracts with a $1.4 million cap hit.

With the new deals – and including Marc Savard’s LTIR exemption – the Bruins will be a little over $400,000 under the salary cap for the upcoming campaign. Still, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Peter Chiarelli make a trade in the coming days or weeks to get some cap flexibility.

That is another story for later, though. For now, The Hub of Hockey can breathe a sigh of relief after getting both Smith and Krug signed with one week left before the start of the regular season.

It’s safe to say for now, that after lengthy negotiations, both Smith and Krug were happy to rejoin their teammates at the TD Garden for Monday’s practice.

“It was definitely tough.” Smith told reporters about the negotiations between himself, his agent and Chiarelli. “At times, you think you’re fighting a three-way battle. You’ve got your own ideas, your agent is advising how he probably should and they’ve been in the business for a long time and that’s probably the advice you should take. The Bruins also have their ideas and ideologies of how they want the whole situation to go. Torey and I were bouncing ideas off each other the whole time, because we just wanted to get to the camp. It seems like it all worked out.”

Both Krug and Smith will not be in the lineup for Tuesday’s preseason game against the New York Islanders. Both, however, should be inserted in the last two preseason games (against the Islanders in Bridgeport on Friday and home versus the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday) before their opening night tilt against the Flyers a week from this Wednesday.

Over the next few days, Krug and Smith will look to shake off the rust and work on their kinks. But being on the ice is quite ideal over negotiating dollars and cents.

“I think at some point you’ve just got to get in there and make sure you’re prepared for the upcoming season,” Krug said to the Bruins media after Monday’s practice. “We’ve talked to Peter a lot over the last few days and we decided to come to the deal we reached and we’re very happy to be here.”

With their bridge contracts signed, sealed and delivered, Chiarelli stated that he is looking to negotiate longer-term deals with both Smith and Krug. For a team that has 12 players in the final year of their contracts, its safe to assume that both Krug and Smith are part of the Bruins’ plan in the long-term.

“We want to sign them to extensions as soon as we can,” Chiarelli said during Monday’s press conference. “Because those are two young men we want to have in the mix.”