Rumor: There may be an offer sheet for Brady Tkachuk after all.

The word around the National Hockey League's rumor mill was that the Ottawa Senators had nothing to worry about when it came to a potential offer sheet targeting one of their players, most notably restricted free agent forward Brady Tkachuk. Now however for the first time we are hearing rumblings that the Senators may not be so safe after all, and in fact they may very well have to contend with an offer sheet in the not so distant future.

Earlier this week TSN's Sean Simpson took to social media to alert fans in the Ottawa area that he had, for the first time this offseason, heard rumblings of a potential offer sheet for the aforementioned Tkachuk. The TSN 1200 radio host did not provide any additional details other than to indicate that he has heard of an offer sheet for Tkachuk, choosing instead to keep his cards close to the vest.

Perhaps even more concerning for fans in Ottawa however is the fact that there may be genuine animosity brewing between the Tkachuk camp and the Senators organization. The words that Simpson used to describe the players feelings on the ongoing negation were "confused" and "frustrated," definitely not the kind of words you want to have associated with a player that is expected to be one of your building blocks for the future. Simpson also indicated that there may have been no serious offer on the part of the Senators thus far, at least as far as the players' perspective is concerned.

Simpson even went so far as to suggest that Senators general manager Pierre Dorion might even welcome an offer sheet, given that it would put pressure on notorious Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk to loosen his purse strings.

Some were quick to doubt Simpson's report given the lack of details he provided, but on Friday he once again doubled down on his comments and may have even gone a step further. Negotiating this late into the offseason with a restricted free agent is not unusual, but Simpson went out of his way to indicate that the information he has collected on this particular negotiation leads him to believe that things are not normal.

If Simpson is aware of this, rival teams may be as well, and it could very well be that a frustrated Tkachuk camp is actively seeking a potential offer sheet from a rival team.