by Larry Brooks, New York Post

Updated: July 1, 2008, 7:11 PM EST 33 comments

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Two years after signing Bryan McCabe to a five-year deal worth $5.75M per that includes a full no-move clause, guess what: Toronto management is attempting to bully the defenseman into waiving his rights to accept a trade anywhere, or else.

Who do these suits think they are? Who do they think they are to take contracts and act as if they're as meaningful as, a) Barry Melrose's insight on ESPN; or, b) decades of Toronto draft picks?

The new Tampa ownership group was intimately involved in the trade-deadline decision to keep the prospective free agent Boyle rather than deal him to the Rangers and/or allow him to hit the market. Now, Oren Koules, the owner from Hollywood, apparently has decided to rewrite the script.

It's much more malevolent business in Toronto where supposed class act Cliff Fletcher is threatening to bury McCabe if he doesn't accede to management's demand that he take the next stagecoach out of town, no matter the destination.

Slap Shots has been told the seat-warmer of a GM was busy last week in Ottawa attempting to construct a trade for McCabe though he did not have permission to do so. It was, in the words of one informant, "a set-up designed to make McCabe look bad if he turned down the deal."

It was a set-up to make McCabe look bad the way the Maple Leafs tried to make Mats Sundin look bad — imagine? — and tried to make Pavel Kubina look bad when they refused to waive their no-trade clauses leading up to the Feb. 26 deadline.

The Maple Leafs have until tomorrow to buy out McCabe if they want him off the team. They can buy him out the way they bought out Darcy Tucker and will buy out Andrew Raycroft. But the money-printing machine in Toronto doesn't want to spend the nearly $11M it will cost to get out of the deal. And so management issues veiled threats designed to scare McCabe into saying "Uncle."

It's not going to work. McCabe isn't going anywhere, even if the Maple Leafs think he'll cave and accept a trade to the Islanders this summer because his wife was born on Long Island. This, of course, assumes Islanders GM Garth Snow, whose team is going to need to spend some serious money to reach the CBA mandated payroll floor of $40.7M, wants McCabe.

"If the Toronto Maple Leafs wish to cut ties with Bryan McCabe, they have an available remedy under the CBA to buy him out," Ian Pulver, who represents the defenseman, told Slap Shots on Friday. "They know how to exercise that right.

"If they don't believe he fits into their plans, it's that simple. Otherwise, we expect the Maple Leafs to respect the sanctity of the contract they entered into with Bryan of their own free will."

If the NHL had a commissioner remotely concerned with the integrity of his league's front-office operations, Gary Bettman would order an end to this spectacle and the attempts of any management to intimidate players into waiving their rights.

But then again, if the NHL had a commissioner remotely concerned with the integrity of his league's front-office operations, Bettman wouldn't remain on Sixth Avenue following the string of ownership debacles that have occurred on his, uh, watch, now would it?

Notes

• The Caps apparently aren't close on keeping goaltender Cristobal Huet, who was as instrumental as Alex Ovechkin in the team's dramatic dash to the Southeast crown, off the free agent market. Sergei Fedorov, also a key trade deadline acquisition, is about to go free, as well.
• The Sharks are on Marian Hossa's short list, a list that also includes the Rangers, Penguins and Red Wings, a source reports. If San Jose adds Hossa, who is believed seeking between $7.5-8M per, they will intensify their efforts to deal Jonathan Cheechoo, who was dangled at the draft. The Blueshirts will be all ears.
• Brian Campbell, good but hardly a difference-maker, is seeking $7M a year. That's why there is going to be so much interest — cough, cough, Rangers — in Montreal's Mark Streit, who compiled 52 of his 62 points from the point this season and will probably come in at half Campbell's cost.
• If the cap increases approximately 7-10 percent annually, it will hit nearly $74M in 2011-12, which will be the final year of the CBA once the PA exercises its option to extend through that season.

  In other words, no need to worry about signing players to long-term deals when there's going to be a lockout and amnesty buyout period after four more seasons, anyway.