Breaking: Leafs are stripping the captaincy away from John Tavares this week

This just in from TSN insider Darren Dreger, the Toronto Maple Leafs are reportedly stripping captain John Tavares of the captaincy and are handing it over to superstar forward Auston Matthews.

From Dreger:

What's interesting to me is that the Leafs are making this move well ahead of training camp and pre-season so that the story doesn't dominate their early season. Presumably, Tavares and Matthews are both on vacation and are unavailable to the media right now, so what better time to drop this news?

Tavares has come under a lot of heat from Leafs fans in recent seasons due in large part to his onerous contract. Tavares's monster seven year, $77 million contract expires next offseason but in the meantime the Leafs are on the hook for a whopping $11 million salary cap hit. While he's a good player, he's not worth near what he's being paid. Matthews may have a higher priced ticket but he's the best goal scorer in the NHL and a perennial Hart Trophy threat. To me it makes perfect sense for the team to choose Matthews as their next captain, I'm just surprised that they're doing it a season earlier than expected.

Standby for more on this developing story.