Offer sheet coming to Toronto?

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a busy summer ahead of them especially with pending unrestricted free agents John Tavares and Mitch Marner looking for contract extensions. However, general manager Brad Treliving cannot ignore one other pressing issue in Matthew Knies, who is also set for free agency this offseason.

Knies is currently in the last year of his three-year, entry-level contract with an AAV of $925,000, and has proven he is worth so much more in Toronto.

However, his top performances this season have gathered the attention of rival teams and David Pagnotta of the Fourth Period believes the Maple Leafs must beware of a possible offer sheet coming their way.

On Sirius XM NHL Network Radio Morning Skate with Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick, Pagnotta spoke about the threat of an offer sheet when asked by Laughlin: A lot of speculation recently with regards to Matthew Knies, a restricted free agent coming up this summer. He’s going to need a new contract. Now, we’ve already seen what Doug Armstrong did last summer and it has worked out well for the Blues, to say the least, with (Philip) Broberg and (Dylan) Holloway. You think that, by virtue of what he did, that maybe things open up for a guy like Knies?”

This is what Pagnotta answered as we will have to play the waiting game this summer:

“Yeah. I mean, at the start of the season, when they had their conversations and discussions, and even going back to the preseason, I kind of wanted to see how the campaign was going to play out. The back and forth options, where do you go full long term, or do you go bridge? What direction do we go in? And I think a lot of it was going to be dependent on how he performed this season.”

He added: “They’ve got a lot of cap space right now because, as you mentioned, Marner and Tavares are also up for new deals. So they’ve got a lot of wiggle room to play with, but they’re certainly going to be cognizant of the fact that, yeah the offer sheets that, that we saw last year.”

Fortunately for the Maple Leafs however, they will have more room for the three pending agents as the cap space will go up.

However, as we’ve seen last summer in Edmonton when the Oilers lost both Dylan Holloway and Phillip Broberg to offer sheets by the St. Louis Blues, Knies is going to be someone to watch if he does hit the RFA market come July 1.