With each day that passes in the 2025 offseason, it seems more likely the New Jersey Devils will go into the new season without adding further at the center position.
If they truly are after another center, are they looking hard enough?
Cheap centers don't exactly grow on trees these days, but up north in the Atlantic Division, the Toronto Maple Leafs have one who would make perfect sense for the Devils.
That player is none other than longtime fourth-line center David Kampf, who finds himself on the outside looking in in Toronto following the recent acquisitions of Nicolas Roy, Scott Laughton, and Dakota Joshua.
Kampf, 30, has two more years remaining on his contract at a $2.4 million cap hit, and this upcoming season will be his last with a 10-team no-trade list.
Cody Glass is better suited for the third-line center role that Dawson Mercer is currently occupying for the Devils, but the Devils don't have much better options beyond them, unless we're including newcomers Thomas Bordeleau and Juho Lammiko in the equation.
Kampf, meanwhile, has a lengthy history of being one of the best defensive centermen in the NHL, and he just bounced back from a dismal 2023-24 season analytically.
The undrafted Czech pivot played three full seasons under current Devils head coach Sheldon Keefe with the Maple Leafs, scoring 26 and 27 points, respectively, in the first two seasons.
In the last two seasons, though, Kampf has scored only 13 goals, 19 assists, and 32 total points, and played only 59 regular season games (and just one playoff game) under new head coach Craig Berube last season.
The Maple Leafs would probably like to have Kampf's $2.4 million cap hit in the bank to make upgrades elsewhere, such as on defense or perhaps the left wing, so a change of scenery would likely benefit both sides.
But, given that Kampf has a 10-team no-trade list and is clearly the odd man out in Toronto, the Maple Leafs aren't going to have too much trade leverage around the NHL.
The Devils, so long as they themselves aren't on the no-trade list, should see this as an opportunity to reunite Keefe and Kampf and capitalize on an otherwise poor center market.
They'll need cap space to re-sign Luke Hughes, yes, but upgrading at center is otherwise the team's No. 1 priority moving forward.
If the Devils need to move the injured Johnathan Kovacevic to LTIR and send a few players down to facilitate these moves, so be it.
Jesper Bratt, Jack Hughes, Timo Meier, and Nico Hischier aren't getting any younger, and it would be unwise to punt another year of their primes away because of bad contracts and an ability to make meaningful upgrades to the auxiliary roster spots.
So long as they can pull it off, the Devils can count on Kampf as a likely bounce-back candidate heading into 2025-26.