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Cliff Fletcher has a long list of potential player moves to address in the next seven days, but the only thing certain right now is that Kyle Wellwood's days with the Toronto Maple Leafs are finished and Bryan McCabe's may not be.
Head coach Ron Wilson will make news today by officially announcing that he is bringing Tim Hunter and Rob Zettler, his assistant coaches with the San Jose Sharks, to Toronto.
Wellwood, 25, will be a restricted free agent on July 1. He will then quickly become an unrestricted free agent, although Fletcher, the Leafs' interim general manager, declined to confirm that yesterday. However, a source close to the team said there are no plans to offer Wellwood a contract.
It could be that Wellwood's NHL career will end after just three seasons, which would be ironic.
When Wellwood, generously listed in the media guides as 5 foot 10 and 180 pounds, graduated from his hometown Windsor Spitfires in 2001, he was not supposed to have much of an NHL career. He was a flashy player, twice hitting the 100-point mark in junior hockey, but in the prelockout NHL, his size worked against him.
But when the NHL embraced a more offensive game after the 2004-05 lockout, the door was opened for smaller, skilled players because they would be granted the room to show their stuff. Wellwood showed promise in the 2005-06 season with 45 points and was anointed the Leafs' No. 2 centre by then GM John Ferguson.
What followed were two injury-shortened seasons of 42 and 21 points, respectively, as Wellwood's fortunes followed that of the team's. There were also questions about his work habits in rehabilitating the sports hernia that troubled him, and when he did make it back on the roster, his conditioning came into question as well.
Wellwood's situation was another of the problems that led to Ferguson's firing last January, as the Leafs suffered from a lack of secondary offence behind captain Mats Sundin.
As for the captain, well, Fletcher said yesterday, your guess is as good as mine.
“All I know is the situation will be resolved one way or the other by July 1,” Fletcher said, naming the date of the NHL's free-agent period.
In the meantime, there are the McCabe and Darcy Tucker problems to occupy Fletcher's time. There had been assumptions that each player would be bought out, but that is no sure thing, at least not for McCabe.
Fletcher said yesterday he does not plan to buy out the last three years of McCabe's contract. And when it comes to accepting a trade, Fletcher said: “We're not trying to talk him into anything.”
This is an interesting turn of events, since it looked certain last week that both McCabe and Tucker were headed for buyouts. Maybe Fletcher took another look at the numbers in McCabe's case and decided it was too expensive.
Under the rules, if the Leafs buy out McCabe, they would pay him two-thirds of the value of the rest of his contract, which is not a big deal for a wealthy team like the Leafs. But the buyout would be applied to the salary cap for double the term – in this case, six years – left on the contract.
The real problem is that McCabe's contract was front-loaded, which means he was paid a higher salary in the first two years of the deal – $7.15-million and $6.15-million (all currency U.S.), respectively. This must be reflected in the buyout, so while the cap hit for the Leafs would be $1.2-million in the coming season, it would rise sharply to $3.2-million for both 2009-10 and 2010-11 before decreasing to $1.6-million for each of the last three years.
Since the Leafs figure to be competitive again by 2009-10 and certainly no later than 2010-11, they do not want that kind of cap hit just when they will be in position to chase the top free agents again.
Tucker, on the other hand, would have a cap hit of $1-million over each of the next six seasons if he is bought out, a much more palatable figure.
Aside from Wellwood, the other restricted free agents will be forwards Matt Stajan and John Mitchell. Negotiations with Stajan are not going well, since he is looking for $2-million a year while Fletcher is thinking around $1.6-million.
Mitchell, 23, spent the past three seasons with the Leafs' Toronto Marlies farm team (he had 51 points in 79 games last season), but the Leafs plan to give him a long look in training camp.
