Maple Leafs General Manager Brad Treliving has a lot of work ahead of him in a pivotal offseason for this franchise. The Toronto Maple Leafs have 18.8 million dollars in cap space available but have a number 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 gaps to fill, that cap space is likely to dissipate very fast and the Leafs will be up against the cap again. One thing Treliving should make is removing David Kampf’s awful contract off the books.

Kampf was signed immediately 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 costly fourth liner in the NHL, which is simply unacceptable.

This contract was absurd from the outset. Kampf is a defensively reliable fourth-line centre which is highly useful to any team the problem is most teams don’t pay their fourth-line centre too 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 inked was not only simply because of the money and duration, but was who else the Leafs had on the roster.

Pontus Holmberg had a nice showing as a competent, defensive fourth-line centre in his first taste of NHL hockey during the 2022-23 season. The Leafs took those strong 37 games and decided to throw an exorbitant deal to David Kampf.

This was a fantastic opportunity for the Leafs to express faith in a young player to play a part on this team while on a cheap deal. With Holmberg paid just over the league minimum, getting contributions from him and using the 2.4 million they handed to Kampf might have been big for this squad.

With the Leafs cap structure, you need men on cheap deals or entry-level contracts to provide productive minutes around the lineup and Holmberg is capable of that.

Another player who could potentially fill this role is Leafs prospect, Fraiser Minten. Minten had a tremendous camp and preseason this past season, earning him his first four NHL games at the start of the year.

He isn’t a great point producer but plays responsible hockey in his own end so the Leafs have youthful, affordable depth in this capacity. It is vitally imperative that Treliving remedy one of his worst mistakes and trade David Kampf this summer.