Steve Lorentz is becoming extremely popular with the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs invited Steven Lorentz to compete at their training camp on a PTO and it barely caused a stir in end-of-summer hockey media coverage.

Despite winning a Stanley Cup last year with the Florida Panthers, Lorentz is a (before now) relatively unknown commodity, so it makes sense that no one really cared when the Toronto Maple Leafs extended the PTO.

Sure, he's a cup winner, but also a fourth liner that the team he won the cup with wasn't keeping. It didn't exactly make people forget about a possible Mitch Marner trade.

And yet, despite that, Lorentz has won a job with the Leafs and become a fan favorite just three games into his Maple Leafs career.

Steve Lorentz is becoming extremely popular with the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Leafs newest fourth liner is a sparkplug who never stops skating, trying, banging or talking to the media. Being a fun player to watch, who has an infectious personality would probably be enough to make him popular in Toronto where the fourth liners are, for some reason, always the fan favorites, but Lorentz is also a local boy who wrote in his yearbook that he wanted to play for the Leafs when he grew up.

In three games Lorentz has not only scored and absoluytely crushed his minutes, but he's also done the impossible and made Ryan Reaves look good.

The Leafs fourth line was one of the worst in the NHL last year, and this year it's because Connor Dewar started on the I.R, Lorentz got a shot and has injected a ton of life into the line. Skating with David Kampf and either Reaves or McMann, it already seems doubtful that Lorentz will ever come out of the lineup.

Where does that leave Dewar? What about Jarnkrok? How can the Leafs stick with the insanely expensive Kampf when they've got so many options for the fourth line? They can't, but at least for now injuries no auxilary players have allowed them to stay under the cap.

Hopefully the Leafs can see the writing and the cap space on the wall and will ship Kampf and Jarkrok out of town as soon as possible. I don't know who their 3C should be, but it isn't Holmberg who should be on the fourth line centering Lorentz and McMann for what could be one of the NHL's best fourth lines.