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Capitals To Purchase, Privatize Capfriendly

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Steve Zissou

Steve Zissou

I'll order you a red cap and a Speedo.
Feb 3, 2006
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City of Angels
Capitals to Purchase, Privatize Popular NHL Salary Site CapFriendly

The deal between CapFriendly and the Capitals, which are owned by Monumental Sports & Entertainment, is expected to close next month after the upcoming NHL draft and start of free agency, said the person, who was granted anonymity because the details are private. The Capitals plan to integrate CapFriendly’s data, tools and other functions—as well as some of the site’s employees—into their in-house hockey operations, the person said.

When that happens, the public-facing site will cease to exist, according to the source, who mentioned that the Capitals can’t keep the site open to everyone once it is infused with confidential league information.

This is a bummer, man.
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I don't understand why it would be so hard -- and seems cheaper though i guess thats specultion -- to build your own, better proprietary NON-commercial software that doesn't f*** over the general public
 
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I'm not sure which surprises me more, the Capitals not buying the site solely because of the domain name (capfriendly.com), or that NHL teams in fact, apparently don't have a better tool to track the salary cap than what the site offered.
 
Raccoon Jesus said:
I don't understand why it would be so hard -- and seems cheaper though i guess thats specultion -- to build your own, better proprietary NON-commercial software that doesn't f*** over the general public
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I would be shocked if buying the ready-made site is cheaper than building your own. Could probably be done with 3 full-time people within a month, depending on the business requirements.

One or two for the site/UI/displaying the JSON responses
One to make the API calls.

And this is assuming they didn't have some of their own code already created.

They undoubtedly have their own on-prem servers for limiting web access.

Edit: though Statto raises good points of why it would take longer than a month. I just think a few dedicated devs would be able to hammer something out quickly
 
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tigermask48 said:
I'm not sure which surprises me more, the Capitals not buying the site solely because of the domain name (capfriendly.com), or that NHL teams in fact, apparently don't have a better tool to track the salary cap than what the site offered.
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Some teams probably do, some won’t.

It’s a shame especially as it will take a while for it to be replaced by something of a similar standard. People on the main board have said a replacement would be there in 6 months… no chance, not at that level. If it were that easy then Washington and the other interested teams would have developed their own. Both the IP and the development involved are significant.

I’ve run development functions and to properly spec, dev, test a full replacement will be a significant undertaking. It’s a shame but I fully understand why it’s being purchased.
 
King'sPawn said:
I would be shocked if buying the ready-made site is cheaper than building your own. Could probably be done with 3 full-time people within a month, depending on the business requirements.

One or two for the site/UI/displaying the JSON responses
One to make the API calls.

And this is assuming they didn't have some of their own code already created.

They undoubtedly have their own on-prem servers for limiting web access.
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I’d be surprised if it were doable in 3 months. I’ve seen reports take 6 months.

You need to spec the required outputs, including the calculations. From that identify the needed data points, design a database (if they do it properly), spec etc. Then getting the actual data may be a challenge, the probably have it but unlikely in the structure they want… so development needed there also

These things tend to grow organically, so we might see some core stuff come out in that time frame with the rest to follow staged. I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but it’d be impressive if someone did it and I’d expect it to need more than 3 FTE’s (if you can find the skills - which isn’t a given).

I’m obviously coming at this from a professional development standpoint, which needs formal development process and documentation around it.
 
Statto said:
I’d be surprised if it were doable in 3 months. I’ve seen reports take 6 months.

You need to spec the required outputs, including the calculations. From that identify the needed data points, design a database (if they do it properly), spec etc. Then getting the actual data may be a challenge, the probably have it but unlikely in the structure they want… so development needed there also

These things tend to grow organically, so we might see some core stuff come out in that time frame with the rest to follow staged. I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but it’d be impressive if someone did it and I’d expect it to need more than 3 FTE’s (if you can find the skills - which isn’t a given).

I’m obviously coming at this from a professional development standpoint, which needs formal development process and documentation around it.
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Would they need all this development though? I thought the NHL had an API that could be consumed, which is why capfriendly had up-to-date details.

If they're just making calls, I don't know why they'd need a new database. The data is already out there.

Maybe I'm making the wrong assumption though.
 
Raccoon Jesus said:
I'm in the wrong business i guess

didn't realize a salary tool for hardcore nerds would be in such demand
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I question the commercial viability of it going forward, in truth. Especially if the teams now create their own if they didn’t have one already.. I suspect it started off as a nerd project, done primarily for fun, that they eventually hoped to sell off, but with it going dark the people that need one commercially will create their own (rather than being caught out again ) leaving fans with something lesser online publicly.. I hope my cynicism is misplaced.

King'sPawn said:
Would they need all this development though? I thought the NHL had an API that could be consumed, which is why capfriendly had up-to-date details.

If they're just making calls, I don't know why they'd need a new database. The data is already out there.

Maybe I'm making the wrong assumption though.
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Okay, fair enough, I did not know that.

I fundamentally failed at the first step of any project, doing the research properly :laugh::nod::sarcasm:
 
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i got the impression it was just API calls too, it seemed like things wouldn't appear on there until it was "officially official" and if it wasn't it would be marked with some kind of "not yet official" comment which i assumed were the manual additions

seemed like the meaningless AHL contracts and stuff appeared near instantly and i doubt they have guys sitting there watching to manually add them
 
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There already is another alternative and it's excellent. And there will be another one pop up I'm sure. Remember Capfriendly was a replacement for CapGeek.

The free market works guys :)

I would love to know how much Capitals paid for it though.
 
johnjm22 said:
There already is another alternative and it's excellent. And there will be another one pop up I'm sure. Remember Capfriendly was a replacement for CapGeek.

The free market works guys :)

I would love to know how much Capitals paid for it though.
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are you referring to PuckPedia or is there another?
 
WHOneedsSOX said:
Friedman listed the teams that currently have software similar to capfriendly already. I'm sure you all can guess whether or not the Kings do.
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I noticed they were missing from the list. I'm curious too, as they have Rob Vollman, who focuses on analytics and has written a few books.

I'm just curious because of how he's kind of been front and center about analytics, I assumed he would want a reliable repository of contract information.
 
I'm sure someone will just rebuild the same site for public use. There have been multiple iterations of that site over the years. From memory I believe one of the original sites went down because the creator passed away. I think that one was nhlscap or something like that.
 
Apparently the NHL doesn't like the existence of these types of sites, and Bettman isn't sure fans really care about this sort of thing.

I usually defend Gary, but he's sounds totally out of touch. Fans love this stuff. It's fun to do armchair GM'ing. That's why franchise mode on video games is so popular.
 
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johnjm22 said:
Apparently the NHL doesn't like the existence of these types of sites, and Bettman isn't sure fans really care about this sort of thing.

I usually defend Gary, but he's sounds totally out of touch. Fans love this stuff. It's fun to do armchair GM'ing. That's why franchise mode on video games is so popular.
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The fans that the NHL markets to absolutely don’t care about this. Us nut jobs on HF and the like do. They dont care about us.
 
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Raccoon Jesus said:
I don't understand why it would be so hard -- and seems cheaper though i guess thats specultion -- to build your own, better proprietary NON-commercial software that doesn't f*** over the general public
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Rich guys f***ing over peasants? Never seen that movie, tell me more...

FrozenKing18 said:
First CapGeek, now CapFriendly. What's the alternative now?
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CapInDatAss
 
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