Phil Kessel is no longer hanging around in the Boston area waiting for a deal.

The highly skilled Bruins forward has returned to his native Wisconsin for the last gasps of summer, surrounding himself with family and friends while his hockey fate remains unknown in Boston.

The 21-year-old Kessel was already 9/10 of the way gone to the Toronto Maple Leafs during the opening night of the NHL Entry Draft last June, and rumors have once again kicked up with him being dangled to one of several different locations: St. Louis, Los Angeles, New York, Edmonton and San Jose – or perhaps even one of the mystery teams that Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli always seems to have up his sleeve.

“I’ve heard the same thing from a lot of different places this summer,” said one hockey source of the Bruins strategy with the winger. “I keep hearing that they’re definitely going to trade Kessel. I don’t think they necessarily want to trade him, but teams have to do a lot of things they don’t want to do because of salary cap issues going forward.”

Kessel spent most of his summer in Boston rehabbing from surgery on his right shoulder after gutting through the final month last season with a torn rotator cuff. Many have taken shots at Kessel for being too “soft,” but the forward took a shot to numb the shoulder pain just prior to the playoffs and finished with 11 points in 11 playoff games for the B’s.

Kessel opted to head home to Wisconsin in August after reporting to the Team USA Orientation Camp in Illinois, and it’s hard to blame him given the complete lack of progress with the Bruins on the contract front.

Kessel led the team in goals by a wide margin with his 36 strikes last season as a 21-year-old while also suffering through a bout of mononucleosis during the toughest stretch of games for the B’s last season.

Following the season, the wunderkind scorer watched his good friend David Krejci bank a three-year, $3.75 million deal in the first few weeks of the summer, and Kessel naturally assumed his turn was coming next in the following few weeks.

But then the B’s signed fellow restricted free agents Byron Bitz and Matt Hunwick to multi-year deals, and filled out the rest of their roster.

Kessel and agent Wade Arnott understandably expected – given his status as a high first-round pick, his track record of improved scoring through three NHL seasons straight out of college and the sizeable leap made from his second to third seasons – that the burgeoning Bruins sniper would bank a bit more than Krejci given his hockey resume and player comparables around the NHL.

But that deal never came to fruition in the first few weeks after the Krejci agreement, and then the trade rumor came down with Kessel wrapped up in a very public botched deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs for Tomas Kaberle.

The aborted Leafs/Bruins trade was followed by long weeks of deafening silence. Contrary to some reports, Kessel’s camp has not refused a series of proposed deals by the Bruins. There has simply been nothing beyond an offer below Krejci money, which was rejected out of hand.

No real long sessions of communication and negotiation between the two sides in good faith. Not even any phone-slamming, red-faced arguments between the Bruins front office and Arnott.

It’s been cold, emotionless, stagnant silence with both sides unwilling to bend or blink, and still no forthcoming offer sheets from other NHL teams with enough room under their respective salary caps to make a run at Kessel.

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Krejci and Kessel had been in constant contact while the unsigned RFA remained in Boston rehabbing and waiting for something to break with contract talks, but nothing has changed. Kessel faces a deadline of Dec. 1 to sign a contract with the Bruins, or he risks losing an entire year of service time. Then he would have to go through this entire rigmarole again next season.

“We spent a lot of times together this summer and we became really good friends. It would be tough to see someone like that go,” said Krejci. “Obviously I’m hoping and praying that he’ll be back. He’s a good guy to hang out with. He’s a good player on the ice. (He scored) 36 goals last year. You don’t find players like that very often.

“It’s not easy. If it was, then he would be signed. It’s a tough situation. What you’ve got to do is understand that it’s hockey. Understand that it’s a business and just get ready for the season by staying in shape. We just have to wait and see what’s going to happen.” 

It’s well known that the Bruins have become an organization thirsting to gain bulk and strength along with more skill at the wings, and their prototypical forwards will scrap for pucks in the corner and shoot the daylights out of the puck.

Kessel can certainly shoot with his change-up snap wrist shot, but he’s not the exact Bruins blueprint for their prototypical forward.

This goes beyond numbers and player comps and offer sheets now, however, and Chiarelli and Co. are coasting dangerously close to Harry Sinden and Mike O’Connell territory with their Kessel dealings. With no offer sheets in hand, everyone knows that the 21-year-old has little negotiating leverage aside from his performance on the frozen sheet.

It’s the same no-win scenario that left a bad taste in the mouths of both Nick Boynton and Andrew Raycroft when they held out of training camp prior to the 2005-06 Bruins season, and it was the kind of “take this money kid and get out of my office before I change my mind” philosophy that permeated the stuffy pre-Chiarelli regime.

But now it’s reared it’s ugly head again on Causeway Street with little salary cap space readily available headed into the upcoming season, and precious little next year when forwards Marc Savard, Milan Lucic and Blake Wheeler will all be looking for new deals of their own.

It’s the kind of potentially ugly situation that’s best served by pulling the trigger on a deal before hard feelings set in and things get uncomfortable.

Many of the veteran Bruins players have begun filtering through the Wilmington practice facility over the last week as the team gathers for informal morning skating sessions, and lockers are again beginning to fill up with hockey equipment and helmets that were idle for far too long this summer.

The nameplates are already in place for a number of players who have yet to arrive, but there’s a giant empty space in the far locker stall formerly occupied by Kessel – a space only two lockers down from Savard’s space. No nametag for Kessel…no hockey equipment…and undoubtedly no Kessel if things continue down the current road of non-existent negotiations.