The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Trade This Horrendous Contract
Maple Leafs General Manager Brad Treliving has a lot of work ahead of him in a pivotal offseason for this team.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have 18.8 million dollars in cap space available but have a lot of players coming off the books (All salary cap stats from CapFriendly.com). Tyler Bertuzzi, Max Domi, Nick Robertson, Connor Dewar, Noah Gregor, Timothy Liljegren, TJ Brodie, Joel Edmundson, Mark Giordano, Ilya Lyubushkin, John Klingberg, Ilya Samsonov, Martin Jones and Matt Murray are all expiring free agents.
With all these holes to fill, that cap space is going to evaporate fairly quickly and the Leafs will be up against the cap again.
One move Treliving should make is getting David Kampf's bad contract off the books.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Trade David Kampf
Kampf was signed shortly after Brad Treliving was brought in. Kampf signed a four-year deal that expires after the 2026-27 season with an average annual average of 2.4 million dollars.
This makes him the most expensive fourth liner in the NHL, which is completely unacceptable.
This contract was nonsensical from the beginning. Kampf is a defensively reliable fourth-line centre which is extremely useful to any team the problem is most teams don't pay their fourth-line centre so much money.
Kampf only recorded eight goals and 11 assists in 78 games this past season (Stats from HockeyDB.com).
One of the reasons why this signing made no sense to me the second it was signed was not only just because of the money and term, it was who else the Leafs had on the roster. Pontus Holmberg had a good showing as a responsible, defensive fourth-line centre in his first taste of NHL hockey during the 2022-23 season. The Leafs took those solid 37 games and decided to throw an overpriced contract at David Kampf.
This was a perfect opportunity for the Leafs to show faith in a young player to play a role on this team while on a cheap deal. With Holmberg making just over the league minimum, getting contributions from him and using the 2.4 million they gave to Kampf could have been huge for this team.
With the Leafs cap structure, you need guys on cheap deals or entry-level contracts to provide effective minutes throughout the lineup and Holmberg is capable of that.
Another player who could potentially fill this role is Leafs prospect, Fraiser Minten. Minten had a great camp and preseason this past season, earning him his first four NHL games at the start of the year. He isn't a big point producer but plays responsible hockey in his own end so the Leafs have young, cheap depth in this role.
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It is absolutely imperative that Treliving correct one of his biggest mistakes and move David Kampf this summer.