In re-claiming Seth Griffith off of waivers, Mark Hunter gets his old player back, and the Leafs acquire the thing they already have too much of: a speedy scoring winger.

Griffith, who played only 26 even-strength minutes in Toronto and had no points in three games was waived and then claimed by Florida.

Florida played him in 21 games, sometimes with Jaromir Jagr and Aleksander Barkov, where he had no goals and five assists.  They waived him yesterday.  They also sent a similar player on their roster, Denis Malgin, to the AHL. It seems from afar like the floundering Panthers are looking to re-imagine their lineup.

Griffith had sustained a concussion in a game in early January and had played one game since coming off of IR.

The concussion happened on a hit from Nikolaj Ehlers, so Leafs fans have to learn to hate the Winnipeg Jets.  The memo on that will be circulated shortly.

However, the point of this claim seems to be to help the Marlies, now struggling without Kasperi Kapanen.

The CBA is crystal clear as always on how this works:

13.22 When a Club claims a Player on Regular or Unconditional Waivers, and, subsequently, in the same season it requests Waivers on the same Player and the original owning Club is the successful and only Club making a Waiver claim, then the original owning Club shall be entitled to Loan such Player to a club in another league within thirty days without further Waivers being asked; provided that such Player has not participated in ten or more NHL Games (cumulative) and remained on an NHL roster more than thirty days (cumulative) following such successful claim.

What this means is that since Toronto waived Griffith, then was presumably the only team to claim him this time, they can send him to the AHL without passing him through waivers.

This puts Griffith in the position of getting a lot of playing time, he is a star at the AHL level, and also gives the Leafs a potential call-up if they need one.

Griffith also requires only 16 more NHL games played to meet the exposure requirements for the expansion draft.  The Leafs currently have a small problem with finding two forwards they will want to expose that meet the requirement.

Remember when players got chosen by teams for how well they played?  Those were the days.

This Is How It WorksToronto Marlies