Even though the Bruins' final 21 games of the regular season come in rapid succession, this might be a long month-and-a-half for hockey in the Hub.

The 2010 NHL trade deadline has come and gone. The Bruins sent defenseman Derek Morris back to where he spent five seasons (Phoenix) and acquired another defenseman in the form of Dennis Seidenberg from the Panthers.

Boston receives a conditional fourth-round pick for Morris (with the condition being a third-round choice if the Coyotes resign him) in 2011. Forward Byron Bitz, minor league forward Craig Weller and a 2010 second-round draft choice (the same pick  Boston acquired from Tampa last year in the deadline deal for Mark Recchi) head to Florida.

Let’s review this for a second — in two transactions, Boston traded Morris, Bitz, Weller and a second-round pick basically for Seidenberg and a fourth-round selection and the rights to Ohio State defenseman Matt Bartkowski. The Bruins saved about a million dollars in cap space between Morris’ contract ($3.3 million) and Seidenberg’s ($2.25 million).

That does not seem like a successful day for general manager Peter Chiarelli and his staff. They probably know it, too.

Chiarelli held a press conference after the deadline passed to explain what had happened and what his thoughts were. He was not defeated, but he seemed a little frustrated and spoke like a man who knew that he was about to take a beating from fans and media alike.

“I am going to get this right out there because I know a lot of the questions will be ‘Why didn’t you get a scorer?’ ” Chiarelli said in his opening statement. “Those are good questions. We wanted to change the composition of our defense. I would say that was an equal priority to scoring, to getting more scoring.”

Without coming out and saying it straight, Chiarelli more or less admitted that the signing of Morris last summer was a mistake.

“When it was available to us that we could acquire a player like Dennis Seidenberg — left shot, plays the right side, strong, physical defenseman and moves the puck, very strong — we thought it would be a better matchup,” Chiarelli said. “Whether or not he plays with [Chara], which he should very shortly when he gets acclimated.”

It should not be overlooked that Seidenberg was an unrestricted free agent last year and ended up signing for less than Morris did, though he is arguably the better player of the two. So, why not just go out and sign Seidenberg last summer instead of jumping through hoops at the deadline?

In retrospect, Chiarelli would likely ask for a mulligan on the Morris signing, especially if he knew at the time that he would not play well on the first pairing with Chara like he was expected to.

“Yeah we did, yeah we did,” Chiarelli said in answer to a question about whether the Bruins considered Seidenberg last summer. “I had a brief discussion with JP, his agent … hindsight is 20/20. He has had a tremendous year in Florida and he has really improved.”

But really, this is not about what Chiarelli was able to do at the deadline, it is about what he was not.

Whatever happened to the “top-nine forward” type he was looking for? He admitted he was in on a series of talks, and his team had targeted eight different players, two of which were not traded. A reasonable guess on some of those forwards would be Raffi Torres (traded to Buffalo) and Alexei Ponikarovsky (to Pittsburgh). The Hurricanes Ray Whitney was probably on the table, but became prohibitive because he wanted a three-year contract extension from the team he was traded to.

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Chiarelli did let one name slip — Wotjek Wolski. If the Bruins had acquired Wolski it would have been the type of move that is right up Chiarelli’s alley — acquiring former first-round draft picks to stock the ranks of his club.

Wolski was drafted in the first round (21st overall) in 2004, the same year that current Bruin Blake Wheeler was drafted fifth. Wolski has come of age faster than Wheeler after jumping from the Canadian juniors (Brampton Battalion of the OHL) to the NHL while Wheeler stayed at the University of Minnesota. In his first three full years Wolski has put up 50, 48 and 42 points and is on pace to break those marks this year with 47 points (17 goals, 30 assists) through 62 games for Colorado.

Wolski would have been a steal if Chiarelli had been able to acquire him and would have fit into the team as a young, talented winger with size who can finish, both qualities that he said would represent the ideal pickup. By the end of the day, Wolski was in Phoenix (who had a pretty good deadline day, all things considered) for young prospect forwards Peter Mueller and Kevin Porter.

“As far as being reasonably close to acquiring a forward, we weren’t that close,” Chiarelli said.

There was also a money issue to deal with in the deadline dance, mostly because Chiarelli has painted himself into a corner with contract extensions to David Krejci, Milan Lucic and especially Tim Thomas to go along with difficult contracts of players who are not performing (Dennis Wideman, Michael Ryder).

“The onus should be on them [to improve scoring],” Chiarelli said. “They are compensated to perform and to score. What I’ve seen is us improving in that area and I don’t want to overreact about us only scoring one goal last night [against Montreal].”

Any impact player would have taken some creative accounting by the Bruins’ front office, and that is in addition to the million dollars saved between Morris and Seidenberg. For instance, Wolski’s cap hit this year is $2.8 million, which probably would have necessitated moving Vladimir Sobotka to Providence. Any deal more than that would have required a significant roster move (Thomas or Dennis perhaps) as the names that had been bandied about all week were in a similar range (Torres $2.75 million, Keith Tkachuk $2.15 million, Whitney $3.55 million).

The flip side to the equation is that the market was prohibitive to Chiarelli really making a quality deal. The sellers were charging high prices for rental players and the GM did not want to give up anything from his cadre of draft picks for a scoring forward that would only provide the team with a marginal benefit. In this regard Chiarelli should be commended. Rumors were that the Blue Jackets were asking the Bruins for a first round pick for Torres (Buffalo gave up a second rounder and defenseman Nathan Paetsch). Making that trade would have been ridiculous for the Bruins considering the over-inflated value of Torres on the open market.

Yet, Bruins fans are frustrated. Chiarelli is frustrated. Claude Julien is frustrated and so are the players. With so many draft picks in the next two years and some contracts that the Bruins would love to get rid of, a lot of people want to see Chiarelli take a page out of the Celtics’ playbook and go for the big trades that could reap big rewards.

But Chiarelli is a pragmatist who has not deviated from his concept of team building as opposed to team constructing. At this rate there is a distinct possibility the Bruins are going to be stuck in the mid-conference purgatory until all the draft picks come of age, if that happens at all. He cannot rely on his current roster for breakout years like the perfect storm that was 2008-09 yet he cannot blow up the core of the roster at the same time. It is a difficult conundrum, with no easy answer available.

One thing is certain. Idle moves and tweaks, such as “wanting to change the composition of the defense” or replacing Chuck Kobasew with Daniel Paille will only do so much in changing the fortune of the Bruins. Chiarelli is in the laboratory working on chemistry formulas when he should be going after talent. Wolski would have been that type of talent but in the end it did not work out, either because Chiarellli would not pull the trigger or the Coyotes did not like what he was offering. In the end, it does not really matter.

“We are trying to improve the team, we are trying to get to the playoffs. This has been a frustrating year,” Chiarelli said. “It is frustrating for a variety of reasons. I can’t lose sight of the fact I have to improve the team in the short run and have to improve the team in the long run. I know there are some fans that are going to be disappointed that we did not get a scoring winger but I still believe in this team and I believe we can improve the offense and I think we are going to have a good run here.”