Leafs looking for assets for Kampf before opting for contract termination
Things between center David Kampf and the Toronto Maple Leafs aren’t going great, to say the least. On Thursday, it was reported that the Leafs suspended Kampf without pay for failing to report to the AHL’s Toronto Marlies. The Czech national is reportedly unhappy with being sent to the AHL, and wants to return to the NHL whether in Toronto or somewhere else.
Kampf hasn’t played in the AHL since the 2017-18 season, when he played 33 games for the Rockford IceHogs of the Chicago Blackhawks organization. Unfortunately for the 30-year old, he seems to have fallen out of favor under this Leafs regime headed by coach Craig Berube. With Kampf only wanting to play in the NHL, and the Leafs not wanting him in the NHL, there is no clear-cut, imminent resolution to the story.
On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by The Fourth Period’s David Pagnotta to discuss the possible next steps in the Kampf saga.
Carter Hutton: The David Kampf situation is a very interesting one. I played with Patrik Berglund. He walked away from $12.5 million. So this is not unique to me, but just a unique case for the Leafs here. What happened? How much do you know about the story about him and his contract being terminated?
David Pagnotta: It sounds like an option with respect to what they’re going to do here. Toronto’s been trying to move Kampf since the summer. It was Kampf, it was Jarnkrok, it was Nick Robertson, the usual suspects that even go back to last season. Treliving has been looking around for a while. The sense that I’ve gotten is that he hasn’t really wanted to just give these guys away. He hasn’t wanted to just take a seventh-round pick and call it a day. He’s wanted some decent type of asset coming back, for whatever the reason. I think in this situation, because it’s gotten this ugly, maybe that’s the route they take. They can trade him for whatever, get a sixth-round pick or something like that and call it. Talking to other teams around the league over the last several months, they know they’re available, but Toronto has had a decent price in mind in order to move out some of these pieces. Teams obviously haven’t been willing to pay, and that’s why they’re still there.
I think with the Leafs, they’re going to continue to see what’s going on here, but it seems like if we don’t get a resolution today or by the end of the weekend, they’ll just rip it up say that it hasn’t worked, we’ll save the money. Go out there and find a new deal somewhere else.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…