The Ottawa Sun's Bruce Garrioch must have gotten a rare day off prior to the day-before-teams-make-decisions-they'll-inevitably-buy-out, a.k.a. the start of unrestricted free agency, so the Toronto Sun's Lance Hornby filled in the Sun newspaper chain's rumor-based-column category for Sunday evening, and he posited the following regarding salary cap-compliance buy-outs addind Christian Ehrhoff to the mix of unrestricted free agents...

“It adds players that you hope your team can get at a better price,” said one NHL exec on Sunday evening. “You know these guys aren’t going to sign for what they had before. You are going to get more players coming into the picture. You hear management guys say it all the time: “I love this player or that player at $3 million, but I hate him at $5 million’.”

And he offered this surprisingly honest take from a league exec regarding Jason Spezza's ability to continue to have Nashville on his no-trade list, which David Poile and Bryan Murray seemed to suggest was the most selfish act in the history of hockey:

“It complicates your life, no question,” an NHL team exec said of players’ having no-go lists. “It’s just another restriction we have to put up with in a cap system — and more players are getting full no-movement clauses in their contracts. Some teams benefit from that at times, like when an agent calls up and says: ‘We want to come to your team’ and you weren’t really aware of it. But it can be a double-edged sword if they just want to come (for a sunset season or strictly personal satisfaction). So you have to be careful.”

Hornby continues with free agent speculation...