from Bruce Garrioch of the Otttawa Sun,

- Forward Radim Vrbata, who is making $1 million and will be a UFA on July 1, suited up for his 1,000th NHL game when the Arizona Coyotes faced the Ottawa Senators on Thursday in Glendale. You really have to wonder how the Coyotes let that happen? Yes, it’s nice to keep your players, but if there were really 10 to 12 teams interested — and that was the talk on March 1 — in the 35-year-old, then why didn’t they move him? The excuse was you have to keep you players but in this case Arizona GM John Chayka should have moved Vrbata and gotten anything in return. “You’re a seller, you go get assets and you play some young guys,” said a league executive. “They’ve been in the tank in the four months and they don’t trade one of their rentals What’s going on there?”

- If the NHL isn’t going to allow its players to go to the Winter Olympics, then why doesn’t commissioner Gary Bettman just let everybody know that’s the case? The talk amongst league executives is while they are aware the owners don’t want to shut down the league in 2018 to let the players go to PyeongChang, South Korea, they haven’t completely ruled it out. Why? Because this is an important issue for the players and there’s still a strong belief that NBC — a major TV rights holder for the Olympics and the NHL — will flex its muscle to get the players to go.

- The Sabres didn’t make any moves on March 1 but it wasn’t for lack of trying. League executives say general manager Tim Murray was active working the phones, however, there wasn’t a lot interest in blueliner Cody Franson and nobody wanted to take a chance on defenceman Dmitry Kulikov, who has struggled with injuries. The Sabres likely will revisit a deal involving winger Evander Kane, who has a year left at $5.25 million before becoming a UFA on July 1, 2018, in the summer.

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