NHL Reporter Believes More Moves Coming For Leafs

Leafs Make A Surprising Move

As the regular season approaches, NHL teams are making the final cuts to their roster, putting numerous players on waivers in order to be sent down to the AHL. As the waiver deadline for the day approached, the Leafs made an unexpected move trading Sam Lafferty to the Canucks in exchange for a 5th round pick.


The move opens up 1.15 million in cap space for the Leafs. The team has been in a precarious cap situation all offseason. Notably, the deadline to be cap compliant is tomorrow at 5pm eastern.

More Moves Coming For Toronto?

The Athletic's Joshua Kloke, who covers the Leafs, believes the Sam Lafferty move is an indication that the team is looking to make a bigger move with the cap space savings. As it stands, the Leafs forward core would likely include rookies Frasier Minten and Pontus Holmberg. While Holmberg has been respectable in a small sample size of NHL minutes and Minten has been exceptionally impressive in the preseason, it would be a lot of pressure on those players if the team is expecting them to play big roles.

Kloke described the potential deal as "big-ish." What exactly that means remains unclear but with the cap compliancy deadline looming, it would seem that the team's options are fairly limited unless they find a way to shed even more cap.

As seen on Maple Leafs Insider