The cap compliance deadline is coming up fast and the Leafs are still nearly $3M over the cap
We are officially one week out from the start of the regular season, though the Leafs don't play on opening night. The Buds will travel to Montreal to open their season against the Canadiens on October 12th. However, before any of that can happen, teams will have to trim their rosters and become cap compliant. The deadline for that is coming up fast.
According to CapFriendly, the deadline for teams to become cap compliant is this coming Monday, October 10th by 5pm. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time for the teams who need to move out some salary to do so. Long story short, we should see some movement this week and leading into this weekend.
The Leafs are one of the teams who is currently not cap compliant, sitting approximately $2.9M over the salary cap. Of course, the Leafs have multiple players who are battling injuries at the moment, so it's likely that a couple of players could start the season on IR/LTIR, which would give the Leafs some additional flex time to become compliant.
John Tavares is dealing with an oblique strain and is expected to miss at least the first couple of games of the season, while Timothy Liljegren is recovering from offseason sports hernia surgery. He'll likely miss the entirety October and perhaps a bit of the November schedule as well. Jake Muzzin also has a back issue that has plagued him for a number of years that he and the Leafs have done their best to try and manage. We should probably expect to have Muzz in and out of the lineup while he deals with that as well.
The easiest way for the Leafs to become compliant once everyone is healthy is to ship off one of Alex Kerfoot or Justin Holl. Holl might make the most sense just because of how crowded the blueline is. If the Buds move Holl and demote Wayne Simmonds and another depth forward, they'll be able to remain below the $82.5M salary cap. However, the Leafs have a number of depth forwards that they have been very high on during training camp, so perhaps that diminishes some of the value that Kerfoot has.
Prior to this summer, the Leafs didn't have as many bottom six options who could also contribute on the penalty kill. Now, with Calle Jarnkrok, Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Pontus Holmberg and potentially even Zach Aston-Reese (PTO), maybe it makes more sense to move Kerfoot. It's certainly a situation we'll be keeping a close eye on.
| POLL | ||
4 OCTOBRE | 409 ANSWERS The cap compliance deadline is coming up fast and the Leafs are still nearly $3M over the cap Who does it make more sense for the Leafs to trade to become cap compliant? | ||
| Justin Holl | 226 | 55.3 % |
| Alex Kerfoot | 115 | 28.1 % |
| Other | 68 | 16.6 % |
| List of polls | ||
