'Widespread feeling' that Matthews will be the target of an offer sheet.

One National Hockey League insider has dropped a bombshell report that could mean big time trouble for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Sportsnet's NHL insider Chris Johnston joined the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast for the Saturday Headlines segment as he tends to do and although a number of topics were discussed it was his comments regarding the future of Maple Leafs superstar Auston Matthews that drew the most attention. Johnston stated clearly that there is now serious talk regarding the possibility of rival teams putting in an offer sheet for Matthews in a bid to pry him away from the Maple Leafs who will need to get creative to fit all of their upcoming contracts under the NHL's salary cap.

"Well we saw with the William Nylander situation in Toronto in took a deadline to get that deal done, the deadline being December 1st," said Johnston on Saturday night. "When it comes to Auston Matthews we are looking at a different deadline and that would be this coming July 1st because there is widespread feeling within the industry that Auston Matthews would be the rare player who would be targeted by an offer sheet. Before July 1st arrives, when he would be eligible to sign one of those, the Leafs will have to decide one way or another how things will go."

Now to be clear an offer sheet does not mean the Leafs would simply lose Matthews should he choose to sign one that the Leafs are not comfortable matching. A player of Matthews caliber would be well over the $10.15 million dollar mark that would push compensation on such an offer sheet to 4 1st round draft selections, so no small reward to be sure. That being said the Leafs would obviously prefer keep Matthews on their roster and build a contender around him for years to come, but it sounds like talks may not be progressing as well as Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas would like.

"There was some thought as well that Kyle Dubas would be anxious to get to work on a Matthews' extension after that Nylander contract, those talks did not pick up at all this week. There's still some wait and see, obviously a couple of months to get things done which Auston Matthews is comfortable with his 15 goals in 15 games to start this year."

If this is indeed common knowledge this will give Matthews unprecedented leverage in negotiations with Toronto and that is assuming he doesn't have any intentions of signing a potential offer sheet from a rival organization. If July 1st is a hard deadline for the Maple Leafs they may have to make Matthews an extremely significant offer in order to avoid him testing the free agent market, even as merely a restricted free agent.

There are no shortage of teams out there that would like a player like Auston Matthews but they will need both the cap space as well as 4 of their own 1st round picks in order to even make that offer sheet a reality. That being said every team that missed out on John Tavares last summer and especially the New York Islanders themselves could pose a serious threat to the Leafs in this scenario. That being said I would be shocked if the Leafs did not match any offer that was presented, short of it being in the realm of the absurd.