Quotable: Chiarelli still looking for that elusive puck-mover on D

Just call Chiarelli Ishmael.

Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli says the quest to add a top-tier puck-moving defenseman to his team’s back end will continue even in the aftermath of trading Matt Hunwick to Colorado for prospect blueliner Colby Cohen.

Chiarelli was asked during a conference call this evening about the status of his current defense corps in terms of moving the puck, and his pursuit of a high-caliber player to truly fit the No. 2 slot behind Zdeno Chara:

“As I said about the prospects [earlier in the call], they can push the puck,” Chiarelli said referring to the likes of Matt Bartkowski, Steve Kampfer, Andrew Bodnarchuk and Jeff Penner. “They have that ability. They can skate, the ones that I mentioned. So we’re going to look to there.

“As far as [as a big-time puck-moving defenseman], there’s few players like that out there and the type of player everyone’s always looking for, ourselves included. So we won’t give up that search because we feel that’s a player … we gave up a player like Dennis Wideman and there are elements to his game obviously that we’re missing on our back end. But having said that, I still like our back end. I know we’ve been in a bit of a rough stretch now, but they’ve shown that they can move the puck, they can pass it within the realm of our system. From a global-search perspective, we will continue to look for that type of defenseman.”