{"id":266843,"date":"2025-11-07T02:47:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T02:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/266843\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T02:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T02:47:07","slug":"maple-leafs-suspend-david-kampf-without-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/266843\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs Suspend David K\u00e4mpf Without Pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Maple Leafs have suspended center\u00a0David K\u00e4mpf<\/a>\u00a0without pay for departing their AHL affiliate while on assignment, PuckPedia<\/a> reports. As such, the $1.25MM cap charge K\u00e4mpf incurred while in the minors is temporarily struck from their books until the situation is resolved.<\/p>\n

Recently, there was talk of a potential mutual contract termination<\/a> between K\u00e4mpf and the Leafs. The 30-year-old has not suited up for Toronto this season after clearing waivers and heading to the minors late in training camp. He initially accepted the assignment, but the defensive specialist only registered one assist and a -1 rating in four games before leaving the team late last month. Today, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet<\/a> reported there\u2019s been \u201cpushback\u201d against a contract termination.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not particularly surprising. Doing so would mean K\u00e4mpf walking away from the remainder of his $1.075MM salary for this season, plus the $1.325MM signing bonus and $1.075MM base salary he\u2019s owed for 2026-27 before he becomes an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. He\u2019s only just past the halfway point of the four-year, $9.6MM extension he signed with Toronto in 2023.<\/p>\n

Others have taken the contract termination approach in the past few years, most notably\u00a0Brandon Saad<\/a>,\u00a0Conor Sheary<\/a>, and\u00a0Filip Zadina<\/a>, in order to remove their albatross contract as an obstacle toward returning to an everyday NHL role. In the vast majority of cases, it\u2019s worked out, at least in terms of the player being able to find an everyday role again. Recouping the money they surrender by doing so doesn\u2019t always happen, though.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as if K\u00e4mpf is completely dead weight. He\u2019s still a serviceable fourth-line piece who can contribute two-plus minutes a game shorthanded. He did fall out of a regular role on a deeper Toronto forward group last season, though. His 59 appearances in 2024-25 were his lowest since the COVID-shortened 2021 season, and he scored five goals and 13 assists with a -1 rating. He\u2019s 51.4% on faceoffs for his career, and while he doesn\u2019t have a history of strong possession impacts, he started over 70% of his shifts in the defensive zone at even strength in all of his four years as a Maple Leaf so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Maple Leafs have suspended center\u00a0David K\u00e4mpf\u00a0without pay for departing their AHL affiliate while on assignment, PuckPedia reports.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,30892,4247,82,746],"class_list":["post-266843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-kampf","tag-newsstand","tag-sports","tag-toronto-maple-leafs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}