The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced that forward David Kampf has been placed on injured reserve retroactive to November 16 and subsequently recalled forward Fraser Minten.
The Maple Leafs have placed F David Kämpf on IR (lower body) retroactive to November 16.
F Fraser Minten has been recalled from the Toronto Marlies (AHL).
— Leafs PR (@LeafsPR) November 19, 2024
While the details of Kampf’s injury are unclear, it’s said to be lower-body related and the messaging of the announcement suggests that it happened at some point during Saturday night’s overtime thriller over the Edmonton Oilers. There wasn’t any indication that he was hurt during the game and it wasn’t mentioned by head coach Craig Berube postgame, so it’s likely that he had something flare up in the days following the game. While the offence has been harder to come by than usual for Kampf, he’s remained an integral part of the team’s penalty kill, which has jumped from 24th-best in the league in 2023-24 to eighth to date in 2024-25.
Minten, who was selected by the Maple Leafs in the second round of the 2022 NHL Draft and has cemented himself as one of the team’s top prospects, is off to a good start in his first taste of action in the American Hockey League (AHL), with two goals and two assists for four points in five games. He’s been skating on a line with Nikita Grebenkin and hasn’t seemed to have many issues adapting to a new league, likely aided by the fact that he appeared in four games with the Maple Leafs at the beginning of last season.
While Minten is undoubtedly the top option for the Maple Leafs to bring into the fold, it casts an ugly shadow on the team’s issues with centre depth. Auston Matthews has been out for nearly three weeks battling what was said to be a day-to-day injury and with the announcement that Calle Jarnkrok, who has played centre in the past, will be out for months with surgery to repair a sports hernia, the team’s issues up the middle don’t appear to be going anywhere. A third-line centre appears to be a top trade deadline target for the team, which was evident from the start of the season, but the injury to Kampf may force general manager Brad Treliving to pull the trigger on something sooner rather than later.
