Morning Skate: Internal screaming

If you were mad on Monday morning, chances are you’re not super thrilled this morning either.

After losing out on Taylor Hall on Sunday night, Bruins fans were hoping for a bounce-back move on Monday.

Instead, Monday saw Montreal sign Tyler Toffoli to a fairly reasonable contract, then saw Nate Schmidt, a defenseman who many thought would help fill a hole in the Bruins lineup, go to Vancouver for the hefty price of...a third-round pick?

Needless to say, Bruins fans are a restless bunch these days, and all of it has raised rumblings of what many feared heading into the offseason: an internal salary cap.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

It’s not hard to see why people are thinking that way. The Bruins let Torey Krug walk for a deal they probably could have matched. They let targets like Toffoli and Schmidt head elsewhere. They didn’t open up the wallet for Hall.

There are probably other legitimate reasons why the Bruins didn’t get this guy or that guy. But when you’re a fan of a team owned by a guy with a reputation for not exactly being a big spender, you start to wonder.

At this point, many of the guys Bruins fans wanted the team to target are now off the board, and fans are left with clinging to the hope that Don Sweeney has something else planned.

Today’s highlight

In looking at CapFriendly to see what kind of cap hit Schmidt carried, I realized that his AAV is around $700,000 less than David Pastrnak’s.

Quite a deal for the Bruins, that contract.

Today’s discussion topic

Internal cap: how concerned are you?