The Maple Leafs will be welcoming back an important part of their forward group tonight as head coach Sheldon Keefe confirmed to reporters including David Alter of The Hockey News (Twitter link) that winger Calle Jarnkrok will play tonight versus the Rangers. This means that they will be activating him off LTIR.
The 32-year-old has missed the last 13 games after sustaining a broken knuckle at practice in January. Jarnkrok’s versatility has come in handy for Toronto this season as he has played at all three forward positions while being shuffled around on various lines. Along the way, he has chipped in with ten goals and nine assists through 46 games while logging over 15 minutes a night.
In order to make the activation official, Toronto will have to get cap-compliant. They’ll need to clear around $654K in cap room and open up a roster spot before Jarnkrok can be added to the active roster. Toronto only has two waiver-exempt players (Matthew Knies and Nicholas Robertson) and it’s clear that Knies isn’t going anywhere. Assigning Robertson to AHL Toronto would be the simplest solution.
However, if they don’t want to do that, they can place a player on waivers later today and designate him as a non-roster player to open the roster spot. That said, if they do that, they will also need to make an LTIR placement, moving either Conor Timmins (mononucleosis) or Mark Giordano (concussion) to LTIR to open up the necessary cap space since the waived player would still count against the books. While it will take some roster juggling, it’s a change that will be worthwhile to get Jarnkrok back into their lineup.