from Elliotte Friedman of CBC,

- Ed Snider is nothing if not consistent. After the 2006 event, we did a piece for HNIC on the future of the Olympic hockey competition. He agreed to be interviewed on-camera and was quite clear he didn’t want it to continue after Vancouver. Steve Yzerman passionately argued in defence of participation earlier this week. The players want to be here. I’m not as convinced as others there will be no NHL involvement in South Korea.

- Why? It benefits the NHL to create doubt in the IOC’s and IIHF’s mind. When negotiations were ongoing for Sochi, several sources said there was no way those two entities would pick up travel and/or insurance costs. “They don’t do it for basketball, why would they do it for hockey?” was the common statement. Well, it happened. If you get someone to bend once, you’re convinced you can do it again. NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr (assuming he is still around then) will wait, wait, wait as is his regular strategy to see what the other side is willing to give up when decisions must be made. Let’s see where this goes.

- One player (and team) that could really benefit from the added lift of this event is Erik Karlsson and, therefore, Ottawa. It’s been a tough season for him, but he’s noticeably energized here. I didn’t see much of Sweden’s practice on Tuesday, but a few players and observers said he was just flying through it. The Senators have had trouble finding him a consistent partner, but he’s lined up with Oliver Ekman-Larsson, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

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