In a crucial offseason for this franchise, general manager of the Maple Leafs Brad Treliving has a lot of work ahead of him.
Despite having a large number of players coming off the books, the Toronto Maple Leafs have 18.8 million dollars in cap room available (all salary cap numbers from CapFriendly.com). The following are free agents who are about to expire: Joel Edmundson, Mark Giordano, TJ Brodie, Connor Dewar, Noah Gregor, Ilya Lyubushkin, John Klingberg, Ilya Samsonov, Martin Jones, and Matt Murray.
That cap space will swiftly go with all these openings to fill, and the Leafs will be up against the cap once more.
Treliving ought to take action to remove David Kampf’s unfavorable contract from the records.
It’s Time for the Toronto Maple Leafs to Trade David Battle
Not long after Brad Treliving was brought in, Kampf was signed. Kampf signed a four-year contract with an average of 2.4 million dollars per year, which ends after the 2026–2027 season.
It is totally outrageous that he is now the most expensive fourth liner in the NHL.
This deal was absurd from the start. Kampf is a fourth-line center that is very valuable to any team and is defensively dependable; the issue is that most teams don’t pay their fourth-line centers too much.
This previous season, Kampf only managed eight goals and eleven assists in 78 games (Stats from HockeyDB.com).
The fact that the Leafs had other players on their roster in addition to the money and term was one of the reasons this deal didn’t make sense to me at the time it was announced. In 2022–23, Pontus Holmberg made his NHL debut as a defensive, responsible fourth-line center, and he performed admirably. After those impressive 37 games, the Leafs chose to give David Kampf an expensive deal.
The Leafs saw this as an ideal chance to give a young player a chance to contribute to the team on a modest contract. Using the 2.4 million they granted Kampf and receiving contributions from Holmberg, who makes little more than the league minimum, may have been quite beneficial for this squad.
Because of the Leafs cap structure, you need players on inexpensive contracts or entry-level agreements to contribute meaningful minutes around the lineup, and Holmberg can do that.
Prospect Fraiser Minten of the Leafs is another guy who could be able to fill this position. Minten earned his first four NHL games of the season at the beginning of the previous campaign after a fantastic camp and preseason. Although he doesn’t score many points, he plays responsible hockey in his own end, giving the Leafs inexpensive, youthful depth in this position.
