Are more trades coming as the Maple Leafs attempt to get under the salary cap?
It had been 1,708 days, or nearly five years since Jani Hakanpää had appeared in an AHL game. But there he was on the weekend, a 32-year-old 6-foot-7 behemoth skating as part of a Toronto Marlies roster that has 12 players who are 23 or younger right now.
Joining him was pesky centreman Connor Dewar, 25, whose last AHL action was back in April of 2022 with the Iowa Wild. He scored a goal and added an assist, a nice show of "Yes, he probably doesn't belong here."
It's a bit unusual to have two players like that in the minors together. Both are NHL players on NHL contracts, signed as free agents in the offseason because the front office sees them as part of the solution in key depth roles.
But both are also coming off significant injuries, injuries the Toronto Maple Leafs have been slow-playing until they're 100 percent ready, to the point the two veterans and their combined $2.65 million in salary cap hit are on a minor-league conditioning stint.
Conditioning stints are quite finite, however. And something is going to have to give on the Leafs roster soon.
Which brings us to our latest mailbag question from William B.:
With Dewar, Hakanpää and Calle Jarnkrok soon eligible to return, how do the Leafs get to a cap-compliant roster? More LTIR (long-term injured reserve), trades, waivers and demotions? Can they carry 23 players or will they go with 21 or 22, and who stays and who goes?
It's a good question. The rent is finally due on the Leafs' overcrowded roster situation , which saw them enter the season spending nearly $5 million over the cap and carrying 28 players on the roster.
Trading away Timothy Liljegren last week certainly helped, as carrying a $3 million eighth defenceman wasn't helping anything, but they also took back an NHL player and salary in Matt Benning , whose $1.25 million over this season and next will need to be part of the equation.
To get our arms around this question, let's take a closer look at who is on the Leafs roster, and who are the best candidates to be moved out in the coming days.
With an extra forward ( Pontus Holmberg ) and two extra defencemen (Benning and Philippe Myers ), the Leafs are at the 23-player roster max, which is going to force a move more than the cap will.
With four LTIR players, the Leafs have a hair more than $3 million in cap room to work with thanks to the Liljegren deal.
They're currently exploring their options for trading Benning, who is coming off major surgery and only played 14 games last season with the San Jose Sharks . Benning, 30, has played in 464 NHL games and before his hip issues was an effective third-pairing defenceman on playoff teams in Nashville and Edmonton.
If the Leafs can't flip Benning for a draft pick, my sense is they'll place him on waivers to get Hakanpää playing time and not lose Conor Timmins .
The other likely waiver casualty would be Myers, who has played all of 12 minutes this season.
If that's the route they end up going, Myers' contract is fully off the books in the AHL and Benning will cost the Leafs just $100,000 against the cap, assuming he isn't claimed.
This would then be the Leafs' 23-man roster and salary cap situation in that scenario.
Carrying 14 forwards isn't the end of the world; in fact, it used to be routine before the salary cap meant more and more teams used shorter rosters to save money. But it will mean coach Craig Berube's press box musical chairs would get more complicated, as two of Nick Robertson, David Kämpf , Steven Lorentz , Holmberg and Ryan Reaves would have to sit night-to-night.
The defensive rotation, meanwhile, would probably involve Timmins getting only spot duty, likely on the second night of back-to-backs, if Hakanpää shows he's ready for close to a full workload.
The Leafs could also shift Oliver Ekman-Larsson over to the left side if they wanted to sit Simon Benoît for a game at some point, as Hakanpää has played second-pair minutes as recently as two seasons ago with the Dallas Stars . Perhaps something like this could make sense:
Jake McCabe – Chris Tanev Morgan Rielly – Hakanpää Ekmann-Larsson – Timmins
Where things get more interesting is when Järnkrok nears his return, which is expected to be shortly after Hakanpää and Dewar are back in the lineup. Assuming they will be waiving and demoting Dakota Mermis when he recovers from jaw surgery, they will again have enough cap room to activate Järnkrok but not a roster spot.
At this point, a forward will have to go. The likeliest candidates, given the roles they've had so far and how they've played, would be:
Holmberg: He's been given plenty of opportunity by Berube, but he's made some key mistakes, his underlying numbers are awful and he's been sitting games. He only makes $800,000, but given what little he's accomplished at the NHL level, could he clear waivers and give them some more Marlies call-up depth? Possibly.
Robertson: There was a trade request in the offseason. And he has only one point in 11 games, along with two healthy scratches. He's only 23 years old and has produced well in the AHL, so he could fetch the most of this group in a trade. But expect more of a Liljegren-like return than anything exciting. It's still possible he figures it out and becomes a more effective depth contributor, although the clock is ticking.
Kämpf: That $2.4 million cap hit through 2026-27 looms large. Kämpf's minutes are down to a career-low 11:15 a game now, and he's been a healthy scratch once. He hasn't been relied on to kill penalties the way he has in the past, and Dewar (or Lorentz) arguably can replace what he does for half the price.
The most compelling scenario here by far is Kämpf. Flipping Holmberg or Robertson for a pick opens enough room for Järnkrok to come back and puts the Leafs roughly $1 million under the cap, enough breathing room that they could make another depth addition at some point.
But if the Leafs can find a home for Kämpf, even if there's not much of anything in return, they'll be dramatically under the cap (to the tune of almost $2.6 million) and still have decent depth beyond their top 12 forwards and top six defencemen.
Not only would the Leafs be clear of LTIR, but they'd be far enough under the cap to accrue some real, difference-making flexibility the longer they stay that far under the cap. Accruing cap space is a complex calculation done on a daily basis, and it's difficult to forecast given we don't know how many injuries the Leafs may have the rest of the way, but it's fair to say Toronto could have well north of $5 million available to them by the March 7 trade deadline in this scenario.
If salary retention was then involved in any trades, they foreseeably would be able to bring in two impact players.
The Leafs are scuffling right now on the ice, and it's hard to picture them going all-in at a deadline when the playoffs aren't guaranteed and we're still four months away from that playing out. But they're going to be forced to make a decision relatively quickly here, and the one that has the greatest upside potential feels like the best move.
If there's a home for Kämpf, you dump the deal, take the cap space, evaluate your forward depth and go big on an impact centreman before the deadline.
Best case? The player they add is good enough that he elevates the third line to the point the Leafs can count on it for secondary scoring and better defensive play than what we've witnessed from down the lineup to date.
That would go a long way to fixing some of Toronto's main problems.
(Top photos of Nick Robertson and David Kämpf: Claus Andersen and Minas Panagiotakis / )
