I believe he has negative value at a 3.5 mil cap hit. He's a 2 mil player at most. And this team is desperate for cap space.
I'd be curious to know who you think is an "equivalent" player to Alex Kerfoot, that makes $2m, that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to acquire?
The reason it doesn’t make any sense is because you don’t understand it.
Go 7 forwards and you lose one of Holl or Dermott, most likely Holl.
Signing a Holl replacement last offseason was expensive, 2M will get you no better than a 5 or 6 D. Now in hindsight, Holl took a step back and Lilly stepped up, but at the time of the expansion draft Holl was looking like a solid number 5 with the ability to look comfortable in the #4 spot and Lilly was still a huge question mark.
So to keep the D in tact they went 4-4-1, exposing Kerfoot, Engvall and Dermott.
Kerfoot is their top 6 winger with versatility to allow him to cover C if needed. McCann was available for trade because Pittsburgh wanted a free out from one of their bigger cap contracts and they knew Seattle would be forced to take one if McCann wasn’t available to them via Pittsburgh.
The Leafs essentially saw Kerfoot and McCann as interchangeable pieces trading a B/C prospect and a 7th for a 2b winger/C, be it via trade or retaining. Turns out they were right and Kerfoot/McCann have looked more or less of equal caliber.
Going one step further... let's say the Leafs went 7F, and protected both McCann, Kerfoot, and Engvall.
You're now in a position where you've got both Kerfoot & McCann on your left wing, which probably isn't ideal being that they're similar players, or having to put one at 3rd line C, which basically prevents you from building the shutdown line that the Leafs have around David Kampf.
It also means that unless you go out and subsequently trade Kerfoot, you cannot sign Nick Ritchie to improve this team's toughness & size.
Assuming you still sign Kampf, you're then shopping in UFA to replace Holl with with $1.5m (as McCann is ~$450k more expensive than Ritchie).
If you trade Kerfoot and sign Ritchie, yes, you can go and try to replace Holl with about $2.5m in cap space to do so, but still, not a lot of Holl-replacements out there for that kind of money. I struggle to think of any, to be honest.
Bottom line... you want to argue that the Leafs would have been better off with McCann over Kerfoot? I don't think many will argue with you, they probably would have been, especially if Tavares/Matthews are able to remain healthy all year, and the $550k in cap space is not insignificant.
But, the difference really isn't all that big, and certainly not as big as what the Leafs could have reasonably projected to be between Justin Holl and his replacement.
