Capitals to purchase CapFriendly website (upd: site going dark July 5th)

[Seanaconda]

Eh, no one really used General Fanager, it was meme. Hence why no one was really mad about it.

It would be like if the caps bought puckpedia.

Didn't Chakya come from a site like this

 

[Viqsi]

If I'm not mistaken, a lot of the player data is sourced from EliteProspects. I wonder how that relationship will work or continue to work (or not work).

I think EP is in a prime position to take over. Go buy a similar site with similar functionality and then develop it. Up until July, the CF data is available. Start paying an intern to copy and paste or run a script to get all of the currently public information. Then upload once the site is ready. You'd only have a couple of weeks to bridge.

Player data is. They don't have the contract data updates (at least, not as far as I know), and that's the really tricky bit.

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

On TJMS, Friedman says that the NHL considers cap information confidential information. The league isn't going to publish information itself for that reason. The Caps wouldn't be able to keep the site open, if they wanted to.

Some teams are sweating because of this. Teams mentioned as already having built their infrastructure: Pittsburgh, Toronto, Columbus, New York Islanders

 

[Captain Mountain]

If you are angry, be mad at the sellout, not the capitalist who did what capitalists do.

Smart move by Ted.

You want us to be mad at the guy who sold a business he built up instead of the guy taking a site that relies on 3rd party data and was developed for public use private?

Its hard to know if it was a smart move by Ted or not depending on the price and other stipulations of the deal, but he's the reason its going private so anger should be directed at him. Capitalism doesn't really have anything to do with this as its applicable to both sides and I don't think there's any argument that society needs a public registry of NHL contracts.

 

[SEALBound]

Player data is. They don't have the contract data updates (at least, not as far as I know), and that's the really tricky bit.

That's why I said buyout a site that already has the base structure in place and then combined.

I mean, hell, even HockeyBuzz has a "Cap Central".

On TJMS, Friedman says that the NHL considers cap information confidential information. The league isn't going to publish information itself for that reason. The Caps wouldn't be able to keep the site open, if they wanted to.

Some teams are sweating because of this. Teams mentioned as already having built their infrastructure: Pittsburgh, Toronto, Columbus, New York Islanders

I believe this is why everything CapFriendly does is based on public disclosures and they say "it's close but not exact".

I imagine several teams already have some sort of internal structure. I could be wrong but it would be hard to imagine an NHL team's front office just hanging out on Capfriendly all day like I do.

That said, if I'm from CapFriendly and helped build the site, this would be the time to go find a VC and get some capital to hire a team to build a clone of capfriendly and offer it to NHL teams...if it's true it's used as much as it is.

 

[bigdog16]

If the NHL were smart (they're not), they would have purchased it and kept it available. Its a great tool for fan interest and engagement in the league.

I would bet less than 1% of fans even know what capfriendly is.

I do wonder what the Caps paid for it though

 

[Viqsi]

Didn't Chakya come from a site like this

Yes and no. Chayka was part of an analytics site, which is not quite the same thing - there's actual knowledge of statistical analysis there to be acquired and leveraged. CapFriendly's value was in being able to get information that is otherwise not public, and that requires more knowing people than knowing math.

 

[Viqsi]

I believe this is why everything CapFriendly does is based on public disclosures and they say "it's close but not exact".

Not everything they get is otherwise publicly available.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDo]

Didn't Chakya come from a site like this

Buffalo’s VP of analytics came from “War On Ice”. He was initially a Penguins analytics employee.

 

[Brookbank]

So is it going dark? It's the best site by far for cap analysis/data since Capgeek went down (rip Matthew Wuest)

Edit: yes

But it's the most boomer idea ever. The next Capgeek aka Capfreindly will be up to replace it in no time.

 

[Golden_Jet]

But it's the most boomer idea ever. The next Capgeek aka Capfreindly will be up to replace it in no time.

Never thought of capitalism as a boomer thing.

 

[Brookbank]

Well this absolutely sucks for us. That website is excellent.

So was Capgeek. Another one will replace it pronto. Just like when a dark market goes down.

There is probably already a Capfreindly wanna be out there waiting for this moment

I thought General Fanager was one at one point

 

[Bruins4Lifer]

Sucks to hear but as many have mentioned, there will be a replacement site that will fill the void.
Though I don't like their layout as much, Puckpedia seems to cover all the basic cap related info that I went to capfriendly for already.

 

[Bounces R Way]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1800166919787659428

 

[Viqsi]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1800166919787659428

Well, there we go. Guess I'm going to have to spin me up another Xenforo Cloud account. I think we'll call it "HFBoreds".

 

[hockeykicker]

On Marek show today with Friedman, they said NHL teams are panicking after caps bought capfriendly. Wonder if we see a bunch of cap analyst hires across the league

 

[StrangeVision]

Well, there we go. Guess I'm going to have to spin me up another Xenforo Cloud account. I think we'll call it "HFBoreds".

 

[CycloneSweep]

Capitals went from a team I never thought about to second most disliked team behind Calgary.

 

[Viqsi]

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

 

[Stephen]

What’s weird to me in all of this is the implication the NHL itself doesn’t have a central registry for all cap and contracts for all teams to reference and administered competently by the league. Like there’s no “pro” version of Capfriendly.

Makes you wonder why they have a “New York” office or a “league” at all when you don’t even have a way to track this stuff.

No wonder they screwed up so hard with Ottawa and the Dadonov NTC.

 

[Viqsi]

What’s weird to me in all of this is the implication the NHL itself doesn’t have a central registry for all cap and contracts for all teams to reference and administered competently by the league. Like there’s no “pro” version of Capfriendly.

Makes you wonder why they have a “New York” office or a “league” at all when you don’t even have a way to track this stuff.

No wonder they screwed up so hard with Ottawa and the Dadonov NTC.

The impression I've been left with is that they track it internally but don't make that info preemptively available to teams - i.e. it'll come up when someone calls in for a trade as part of the approval process but that's it. Not sure how accurate that is tho.

 

[Winger98]

The impression I've been left with is that they track it internally but don't make that info preemptively available to teams - i.e. it'll come up when someone calls in for a trade as part of the approval process but that's it. Not sure how accurate that is tho.

wonder if we'll see that change over the summer now. If there are a lot of teams seriously inconvenienced by this, maybe changing how the league handles and makes available cap info will be something they'll look at changing just screw Ted back on it.

 

[Golden_Jet]

The impression I've been left with is that they track it internally but don't make that info preemptively available to teams - i.e. it'll come up when someone calls in for a trade as part of the approval process but that's it. Not sure how accurate that is tho.

The league didn’t track NMC’s or NTC’s, hopefully that is changing.

 

[Sun God Nika]

How'd you say those two things back to back and not realize exactly why it isn't the shady, pointless move you think it is? They took a useful public tool that made life easy for competitors and privatized it. I'm not a fan of capitalism overall but it's easier to justify in competitive sports settings like this, if your argument is that the Caps are bad people because other GMs wanted to use the tool it's a bit like complaining about a team signing a UFA because other teams wanted him for less.

You as a fan with no influence going without a cap resource and GM simulator for a few months is not the serious blow you're making it out to be.

It doesn’t take a lot to understand why the caps made the move but thanks for explaining it anyways.

Comparing a public resource that everyone can use to a free agent is a reach for sure. Anyways you can see the public perception about this move makes the org look bad you don’t need to argue against that it’s facts.

 

[Stephen]

The impression I've been left with is that they track it internally but don't make that info preemptively available to teams - i.e. it'll come up when someone calls in for a trade as part of the approval process but that's it. Not sure how accurate that is tho.

It wouldn’t be the NHL if things were transparent.