This Macklin Celebrini move is turning heads and worrying Leafs fans
Auston Matthews is back in trade talk, and Craig Berube now has fresh social media smoke around his captain.
This time, the spark came from an NHL follow tracker screenshot that showed Macklin Celebrini starting to follow Matthews on Instagram. The same screenshot also showed Celebrini following Vincent Desharnais.
That does not mean a deal is on the table. But when Matthews is already sitting in rumor chatter, a move like that gets screenshotted, clipped, and pushed around fast.
And that is where this story gets its legs. Matthews is not a fringe name or a depth piece. He is Toronto's captain, the face of the roster, and the first name attached to any major Leafs conversation.
A fan proposal made the rounds right behind it, built around Matthews to San Jose with 5 500 000 retained. The return in that mock idea was William Eklund, the Sharks' 2026 1st-round pick, the Oilers' 2026 1st-round pick, the Avalanche's 2026 2nd-round pick, plus other pieces.
To TOR:
- William Eklund
- Sharks 2026 1st round pick
- Oilers 2026 1st round pick
- Avalanche 2026 2nd round pick
To SJS:
- Auston Matthews (5.5m retained)
- William Villeneuve
- Simon Benoit
- Ducks 2026 4th round pick
-
That is still fan fiction, not a reported trade framework. But it shows where the public mind goes the second Matthews gets tied to any online clue involving the Sharks and their young core.
Matthews also is not a distressed asset. He put up 27 goals and 53 points in 60 games, and his cap hit sits at 13250000 through 2027-2028.
-
The social clue matters because the player matters
The screenshot gains traction because Celebrini is not just any young player clicking around online. He is the Sharks' headline piece, so even a simple follow gets read as fuel when a star like Matthews is already in rumor traffic.
The Desharnais follow adds another layer because it widened the conversation beyond one random click. Fans looked at the two new follows together and started building a story around San Jose's roster and Toronto's pressure.
That pressure is real in Toronto. The Leafs finished 32-36-14, and Berube now has to manage a room where every Matthews rumor drags a spotlight onto the bench, the front office, and the next big roster swing.
There is also a simple hockey problem here. Trading Matthews would not be some minor shuffle in the top six. It would be a franchise-level decision that resets the middle of the ice in one shot.
So the online noise is easy to understand. A superstar captain. A young Sharks star. A tracker account. A fan-made package with premium picks. That is enough to push the talk into overdrive for a day.
Still, the clean read is this: the follow created buzz, not proof. Until something bigger moves, Auston Matthews stays where every real Leafs decision still starts.
|
LIVE
MAY 6, 2026
| ||||
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Josh Doan | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Ryan McLeod | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Zach Benson | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Bowen Byram | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Leo Carlsson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Kirby Dach | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jordan Greenway | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jansen Harkins | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Beckett Sennecke | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mark Stone | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nick Suzuki | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ivan Demidov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jack Eichel | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Chris Kreider | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ryan Poehling | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Mattias Samuelsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Juraj Slafkovsky | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Troy Terry | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Shea Theodore | - | 1 | 1 | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||