Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a>, the club placed serviceable fourth-line centre David K\u00e4mpf on waivers for the purposes of terminating his contract.<\/p>\nK\u00e4mpf may not be great bang for the buck at his current $2.4 million AAV, a salary that was set to run through 2026-27. The 30-year-old\u2019s first pass through waivers upon conclusion of training camp proved that.<\/p>\n
But K\u00e4mpf, 30, still believes he is an NHL player. And, starting Friday afternoon, when K\u00e4mpf\u2019s Leafs tenure officially ends, we\u2019ll see if one of the 31 other general managers shares that belief.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After four games riding the AHL buses this fall, something he hadn\u2019t done since 2017-18 in Rockford, K\u00e4mpf had enough. The Czech native and 536-game veteran is willing to accept a reduced salary to keep his NHL dream alive and boost his blip on his country\u2019s Olympic radar.<\/p>\n
Though he\u2019ll retain the $1.35-million signing bonus he was awarded on July 1, he is walking away from roughly $3.7 million in guaranteed money \u2014\u00a0minus whatever he can recoup from a new team over this season and next.<\/p>\n
K\u00e4mpf had been a trusted role player under ex-coach Sheldon Keefe, killing penalties, winning most of his faceoffs, and dining on D-zone starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But he fell out of current coach Craig Berube\u2019s favour so aggressively that he got scratched in 12 of Toronto\u2019s 13 playoff games last spring, Treliving tried to move him via trade, then K\u00e4mpf failed to make the roster out of September\u2019s training camp.<\/p>\n
When 4C Scott Laughton suffered a foot injury in pre-season and the durable K\u00e4mpf still didn\u2019t get tapped to fill in his most natural position, the writing was on the wall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t see frustration in K\u00e4mpf,\u201d Berube said, after the centre took leave from the Marlies. \u201cHe came in, and obviously there was competition at camp, and he had to fight for his spot. We have too many players, and we\u2019ve got to make decisions. Him going down to the minors, he doesn\u2019t feel like he wants to be down there, so that\u2019s his decision on what he does. That\u2019s not for me to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The irony in K\u00e4mpf\u2019s departure after four-plus years with Toronto is that the Leafs are currently screaming for (a) centre depth, with Laughton (upper body) injured again and Auston Matthews (lower body) also sidelined; and (b) defensive stability and reliable penalty killing, the two things K\u00e4mpf excels at.<\/p>\n
Toronto ranks 32nd in goals allowed per game (3.82) and 21st on the PK (77.36 per cent).<\/p>\n
New on the job in 2023, Treliving overpaid for K\u00e4mpf in a thin free agency market once his pitch to UFA centre Ryan O\u2019Reilly fell flat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
K\u00e4mpf is who he is: defence first, low scoring. Plenty of neutral shifts. He got 3C money for 4C performance.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Treliving traded a first-round pick plus prospect Nikita Grebenkin to Philadelphia at the 2025 deadline for Laughton, who brings more offence, sandpaper, and intangibles than K\u00e4mpf. That made him expendable.<\/p>\n
Today, management would rather have the cap space than the depth.<\/p>\n
Soon, Joseph Woll and his $3.67 million will needed to be activated off LTIR, for example.<\/p>\n
K\u00e4mpf\u2019s partially buried salary still counted $1.25 million against the 2025-26 Leafs\u2019 cap; his $2.4 million for 2026-27 comes off completely, which opens Treliving to increased spending this summer.<\/p>\n
For the Leafs\u2019 sake, let\u2019s hope management spends that money wisely.<\/p>\n
On a player the coach deems valuable enough to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 Brad Treliving has picked a curious time to dispose of a regrettable contract. On a day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-282244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282244","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=282244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}