The 2001 NLL Entry Draft wasn't suppossed to be this way. Gavin Prout goes to New York, Blaine Manning heads to Calgary, and 115 other players get distributed around the league in relatively quiet fashion, we all assumed.

How wrong we were.

After a full summer of speculative "Will he or won't he," it appears Gavin Prout will indeed reject the Saints, owners of the first pick in tomorrow night's draft, and hold out until he can join the expansion New Jersey Storm.

"It's nothing personal, it's just that the Storm have a great organization, and I like the way they treat their players," Prout told the Toronto Star several days ago.

If the latest array of NLL insiders is to be believed, there could also be some greenbacks impacting Prout's holdout threat. Although he firmly disputes the suggestion, many NLL observers believe Prout will be financially rewarded by the Storm -- perhaps with a job in the team's offices -- for not playing for any other team.

"I don't know where this front-office job offer is coming from," Prout said. "[New Jersey hasn't] talked to me about being anything other than a player."

As despicable as a six-figure payoff (as rumored) would be, Storm owner Jayson Williams could afford it. Saints owner Mike Gongas, though, couldn't come close to matching it.

Perhaps this wouldn't be quite such a vicious episode if the Saints and Storm weren't already bitter rivals, separated by barely more than New York City proper. Even with all the compensation he got for the territorial invasion, Gongas doesn't want Williams anywhere near his home turf. After Williams threatened to raid the Saints' roster and tried to use a loophole to sign Prout earlier this summer, it's hard to blame him.

Like it or not, though, the Storm is going nowhere, and Gongas is trying everything in his bag of tricks to muddy the waters. He insists that the top pick has Prout's name written all over it, and that the Saints will hold his rights for the next two years unless an attractive trade offer rolls in.

The risky brinksmanship could be a ruse while Gongas finds his way out of a terrible jam. In addition to Prout, Manning has reportedly told the Saints to stay away, too. The Saints don't even have local product Doug Shanahan as a fallback option; The Hofstra graduate appears more interested in pursuing a professional football career.

What's a team owner to do? Gongas' only option now may be to trade the pick and cut his losses, although he shouldn't expect fair value in return. A couple teams are interested in trading before the draft, but the more likely outcome will include the Saints shopping a holdout player.

At number two, the Calgary Roughnecks are as much entangled in this fiasco as the Saints. The Roughnecks can't do anything without knowing where the top pick is going and who it will be spent on, because they have a tough decision to make. Whether or not Prout shares the feeling is unknown, but the Toronto Rock would like to snag him and is believed to be offering Calgary native Kaleb Toth for the second-overall pick.

Roughnecks coach and general manager Kevin Melnyk could himself select Prout, but that would mean forgetting that the whole reason Melnyk traded the top pick to New York in May is because Gavin wouldn't commute to Alberta for the games.

The Ottawa Rebel, meanwhile, has been peddling its two first-round picks (tenth and thirteenth overall) in and around Calgary, and to a general manager looking to build a team from scratch, quantity could outweigh quality.

Melnyk's man is Blaine Manning, though. If the Sherwood Park, Alberta, native remains on the board after one pick, it would be very difficult to see the Roughnecks looking elsewhere.

"He's just a great kid," Melnyk says of Manning. "He's tough as nails, has a great stick, plays inside really tough and can take the beating. He's just a quality ball player who doesn't hurt you in your own end. I think he's going to prove himself to be a better ball player eventually [than Prout]."