Morning Skate: Loopholes

Monday! Hope you had a nice Christmas, or as nice as a pandemic Christmas can be.

We’ve got another one of those weird weeks coming up, with New Year’s Eve on Thursday and the entire world finally kissing 2020 goodbye when Friday begins.

Good riddance.

The World Juniors continue, and our man Sky has you covered, as he does every year. He is the King of World Juniors Content.

Aside from World Juniors, the two biggest bits of NHL news from the weekend tangentially relate to the Bruins:

• Mike Hoffman signed a PTO with the St. Louis Blues.
• The Tampa Bay Lightning dumped more salary and acquired more cap space as their “is that legal?” cap machinations continue.

As far as Tampa goes, whatever. They’re playing within the boundaries of the rulebook. Good for them. It’s how the Patriots operated for decades.

Hoffman, however, is a big surprise. Sure, he’s 31, but he’s also scored 25+ goals in five of the last six seasons. That includes 65 goals in 151 games for bad Florida Panthers teams over the last two seasons.

Yet a PTO is all he could muster? Supposedly, the market had a lot to do with it, but...yikes. The takes in BruinsLand should be good.

Today’s highlight

BUZZER BEATER.

Today’s discussion topic

Get anything good for Christmas?