Alex Kerfoot might be the odd man out after Toronto’s latest acquisitions

Abraham Smith

The Toronto Maple Leafs are leading the way.

A week and a half after acquiring Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari from the St. Louis Blues, general manager Kyle Dubas pulled the trigger on another big trade, sending two players and two draft picks to the Chicago Blackhawks for Sam Lafferty and Jake McCabe …

We’ll have analysis of the trade and what the Leafs are getting at both Lafferty and McCabe later in the day, but I’ll focus on the impact of the salary cap in this article.

Neither McCabe nor Lafferty are renters. Lafferty is in the first season of a two-year, $1.15 million-per-year contract and is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent after the 2023-24 season. McCabe is in the second season of a four-year, $4 million-a-year contract, but the Blackhawks keep 50 percent of his salary, so he’s costing the Leafs $2 million against the salary cap for two more seasons after this one.

With Lafferty and McCabe on the team, the Leafs have a $2.85 million salary cap room with a full 23-man roster. That’s not an issue right now, but something needs to move when the team activates Matt Murray from the Long-Term Injured Reserve.

Murray has been off the shelf for a month with an ankle injury but is expected to be ready to play again this week. As much as fans might want to see the Leafs pull a Nikita Kucherov and keep Murray on the LTIR until the playoffs start and the salary cap doesn’t matter, that’s not going to happen.

Given Murray’s $4,687,500 cap hit, the Leafs will do it have to cut $1.8 million from their roster to stay cap compliant when he’s back. Conor Timmins and/or Zach Aston-Reese’s downgrade won’t be enough to get things going as they have cap hits of $850k and $840k respectively, so the Leafs will likely have to take another trade.

So who could be the underdog?

The most meaningful name is Alex Kerfoot. He was pushed down the team’s depth chart to the fourth row following the addition of O’Reilly and Acciari and may not have a guaranteed spot in the lineup now that Lafferty is in the mix.

Kerfoot has a $3.5 million cap hit and is a season-ending unrestricted free agent, so it wouldn’t be a huge request for another team to take his contract. remarked Frank Seravalli that Kerfoot and the Vancouver Canucks “have been a bit smoke lately” so that’s something to watch out for before Friday’s close.

THE DAILY FACEOFF TRADE DEADLINE SHOW

Join us for the Daily Faceoff Live: Trade Deadline Edition on March 3 as Frank Seravalli and the panel break down the latest rumors, news and rumors from the NHL. The show will be live on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter from 12pm – 4pm ET to keep you up to date on all trading deadlines no matter where you are watching from.

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