RALEIGH--The captain did not go down with the ship. Ron Francis, the leader and the face of the Carolina Hurricanes, abruptly stepped off the listing hockey team Tuesday to join one that can yet go places, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Fans could mutiny over this, but whom would they mutiny against? Obviously, there is no one in charge.

The captain is gone. The coach is doing what he is told with what he has left. And the admiral setting the course, general manager Jim Rutherford, seems mostly interested in throwing people and their heavy contracts overboard.

So, fans are left to drift and wonder: How far can a franchise sink before it is no longer afloat?

Rutherford did what he could to say Francis' departure was just a case of the team accommodating its longtime star. Instead of a gold watch, they gave him a chance at a silver cup, the Stanley Cup.

In his 23rd and likely his last season, the 41-year-old Francis suddenly wanted a final shot at the Cup just as the trading deadline was to expire Tuesday. The Canes, out of the playoff picture for a second consecutive season, were willing to let the future Hall of Famer go in return for a token offering, a fourth-round draft pick.

Rutherford said Francis will be back in some form. The Hurricanes will honor him sometime in the RBC Center and retire his number. He could return for a position in the front office. Maybe one day he could be back as a Canes coach.

Meanwhile, wave and say adieu to the player from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, as he goes off to the team he rooted for as a boy. But what can be said to the boys and girls and men and women here who rooted for him?

He was "Ronnie Franchise," the ultimate Hurricane. Rutherford said he wouldn't be traded. Francis said he didn't want to go. He won two Stanley Cups during his time in Pittsburgh. He said that was enough.

But Rutherford traded Francis, and Francis now thinks two Cups are not enough. Say it ain't so about the man who just passed Rocket Richard.

Situations evolve. Minds change. It's hard to begrudge Francis his last hurrah. But it's also hard to accept this ending as an isolated adjustment for a special player.

Francis represented the franchise as a player and continues to do so as a departure. The Canes are an organization that has gone from being a loyal family confidently building a winner to a lurching outfit desperate to trade players and cut costs.

The Francis trade is the latest and perhaps crowning event in the dismantling of a club whose Stanley Cup run captured the Triangle a scant two years ago.

Paul Maurice, a popular figure and the only NHL hockey coach North Carolina ever called its own, was fired after eight years. That was supposed to kick-start the team. It didn't.

Goalie Arturs Irbe, the eccentric but likable Latvian who led the Canes to the Cup Finals, was banished to the minors and then brought back to audition for a trade.

Jeff O'Neill, the scoring threat whose famous black eye in the 2002 playoffs made him the eye of the Hurricanes, spent the last month on the trading block. So did fan favorite Sean Hill. Indeed, every player who's over 25 is on thin ice with this organization.

Hockey is a simple game that evolved from kids with sticks on frozen ponds, but some fans and most NHL executives insist that only the deeply initiated "know hockey." The moves by the Canes are said to be acceptable to those who recognize the necessary and inevitable transitions of the professional game.

One doesn't need to "know hockey" to know the NHL is in trouble. It's fighting a decline in fan interest and facing a contract dispute between owners and players that could cancel the 2004-05 season.

One reason the NHL struggles is that its rosters are written in water. NHL coaches get fired in a heartbeat. Players are here and gone before fans can pronounce their names. And when some bond does develop between fans and the team, owners won't pay to keep those bonds intact.

"Win and they will come" is the mantra of a quick-fix NHL desperate for gate revenue. That's true when it works, destructive when it doesn't.

Now the NHL's financial losers have adopted a new code: "Give 'em less, and they won't notice."

But fans do. They'll notice "Ronnie Franchise" is gone. And they'll wonder how long the franchise he represented will stick around, too.