League News: NHL Talk - (News n' Scores n' Stuff) | 2023-24 Regular Season Edition

[895]

how bad is our in house capology department that this move makes sense???

 

[Vivaldi]

Lol, Leonsis must be feeling generous. Letting the people behind Capfriendly make a bunch of money while taking the service offline so another group can come in, clone it in a month and also make a bunch of money out of nowhere. Christmas in July eh.

The amount of seething a simple act of kindness is causing on the main boards is hilarious to behold. Better start to the offseason than I expected

 

[PlushMinus]

Lol, Leonsis must be feeling generous. Letting the people behind Capfriendly make a bunch of money while taking the service offline so another group can come in, clone it in a month and also make a bunch of money out of nowhere. Christmas in July eh.

The amount of seething a simple act of kindness is causing on the main boards is hilarious to behold. Better start to the offseason than I expected

I don't get your comment about "a simple act of kindness"?? What a weird thing to say.

The article says CapFriendly will go "dark" after the purchase is complete. So that means all of us who've been using it will also be left "in the dark".

 

[hockeykicker]

I’d assume they are adding the CapFriendly guys to their hockey ops staff too?

sounds like it. He has front office experience

 

[Alexander the Gr8]

I don’t get what the outrage is about, this is pretty normal stuff in the software world.

When somebody develops a software tool or platform that is greatly beneficial to many, it’s not uncommon for them to get offers for another company’s exclusive usage.

Next step is that the competition will catch up and improve the product. Remember when Microsoft acquired Skype? Microsoft used it to create their own platform (MS Teams) and other companies like Zoom made their own version of it.

I’ll bet anything that there will be a newer (and possibly better) CapFriendly alternative by the end of the year.

 

[hockeykicker]

The NHL's new and as yet unnamed expansion franchise made another key hockey operations hire Monday that might be a bit unpopular with hockey fans everywhere. That's not being negative, it just speaks to how important Tom Poraszka has become to hockey fans and media.

You may not know Poraszka's name, but if you're a hockey fan, you know his website. GeneralFanager.com came in to fill a major void left following CapGeek.com founder Matthew Wuest's death after a cancer battle. Providing accurate, speedy salary cap numbers for every player and team was an invaluable service for many hockey fans and pretty much everyone in the media.

However, following Monday's announcement that Poraszka had been hired by the Las Vegas franchise, it means General Fanager is no more. The site only has one live page currently. It is a goodbye message from Poraszka, who was running the site essentially as a labor of love.

this isnt the first time an nhl team has done this

 

[BiPolar Caps]

First CapFriendly, then it'll be Twabby that Ted/BMAC will swoop up from us.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Twabby sitting at the table next to BMAC on June 28th in Nevada. Of course it's going to have to be a much bigger table then what the other teams may have in order to have room for all of Twabby's charts.

 

[twabby]

First CapFriendly, then it'll be Twabby that Ted/BMAC will swoop up from us.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Twabby sitting at the table next to BMAC on June 28th in Nevada. Of course it's going to have to be a much bigger table then what the other teams may have in order to have room for all of Twabby's charts.

Don't worry everyone. There is no way I'd ever take a position that:

1. Would pay half of my market rate
2. Would ignore my research in favor of hunches about character and truculence
3. Would require me to wear pants

 

[Ovechkins Wodka]

“Greed is good” - Ted

 

[pman25]

how bad is our in house capology department that this move makes sense???

Maybe it’s about to get a lot more complicated with Backstrom and Oshie on LTIR, we need the nerds

 

[AlexModvechkin8]

I don’t get what the outrage is about, this is pretty normal stuff in the software world.

When somebody develops a software tool or platform that is greatly beneficial to many, it’s not uncommon for them to get offers for another company’s exclusive usage.

Next step is that the competition will catch up and improve the product. Remember when Microsoft acquired Skype? Microsoft used it to create their own platform (MS Teams) and other companies like Zoom made their own version of it.

I’ll bet anything that there will be a newer (and possibly better) CapFriendly alternative by the end of the year.

Because it sucks ass, that’s why people are outraged. It’s a great tool that is widely used by fans and media and it is lame as hell that it’s being taken from the public, and it’s honestly pretty pathetic from a league standpoint that a website that tracks cap structure and draft picks has to even be acquired by a team. Why is that even necessary? Why doesn’t the league have an internal CapFriendly? The NHL seems to go out of its own way to piss off its fans and this is just another example of them being asleep at the wheel.

And I’m not sure your analogy makes total sense. Sure, competition spiked up after Microsoft acquired Skype but anyone could still use Skype. It’s not like Microsoft acquired Skype and then made it go dark to everyone except Microsoft employees.

 

[Calicaps]

I'm disappointed that Capfriendly won't be available to the public anymore. But if it was going to be bought, I'm delighted that Ted snagged the best capologists out there for the Caps.

 

[usiel]

Main board tears....

 

[HTFN]

I'm disappointed that Capfriendly won't be available to the public anymore. But if it was going to be bought, I'm delighted that Ted snagged the best capologists out there for the Caps.

This, I get why it sucks to lose a public tool but some people really need to chill out on the entitlement thing. I'm not going to pretend like I fully understand why you do it but it's also not my money and I don't really think he's buying something he expects to become completely valueless. A new public tool will inevitably come, I doubt the Caps bought this one so that they could strip the ability to dream up free agency signings from the fans.

Main board tears....

So much bitching about how the Caps are so stupid that they needed to buy Capfriendly to teach them how to manage their cap and I'm sitting over here going "haven't we seen loads of teams use it a lot because it's better than their in-house stuff? Especially around the deadline?"

So while I'm pretty sure they got something more out of this than the ability to shutter a website... even if that is the only thing they got they picked a pretty f***ing funny time to do it and I hope it throws a wrench in draft floor trades and the July 1st rush.

 

[trick9]

It's the employees they wanted, which makes sense. Also it's kind of funny seeing all kinds of hate for the Capitals for this when there's been teams over the years trying to do the exactly same thing. This just happened to be either the best time or the best organization to sell it to for them.

 

[RedRocking]

I'm disappointed that Capfriendly won't be available to the public anymore. But if it was going to be bought, I'm delighted that Ted snagged the best capologists out there for the Caps.

So much bitching about how the Caps are so stupid that they needed to buy Capfriendly to teach them how to manage their cap and I'm sitting over here going "haven't we seen loads of teams use it a lot because it's better than their in-house stuff? Especially around the deadline?"

Yea, why employ a SW dev team to make you an internal tool, when you can buy the best in class right off the shelf.

Apparently, many teams were already licensing CF’s APIs, and there were other bidders to take the whole thing. At a certain point, a one time cost to acquire is better than continuing to pay licensing fees. Businesses prefer variable costs to fixed ones. Several teams seemingly came to the same conclusion that buying it all made the most fiscal sense.

Also, Ted isn’t really paying to shutter the site to screw the public and gain some big advantage over other teams. But rather, he is just bringing the guy behind the site into the FO. That guy says, “sure, I’d love to come work for you, but you have to buy out my business to get me.” And once inside, he can further tailor his work/tools to best help the org. This is normal business operation, and asset acquisition.

It sucks that people are losing a tool they like and rely upon. But saying that the Caps are now the most hatable org, even above Vegas (!!), is a bridge too far - and that comparison kinda offensive, lol.

 

[trick9]

CapFriendly will live internally with the Capitals, who anticipate growth in similar capacities to augment analytics, scouting and player development, the source said.

Several NHL clubs were interested in buying CapFriendly, the source said, and another source familiar with talks the site’s owners held with other clubs.

The site was going to be gone from the public anyways.

Source: Capitals to purchase popular salary cap website CapFriendly

 

[D0ctorCool]

I don’t get what the outrage is about, this is pretty normal stuff in the software world.

When somebody develops a software tool or platform that is greatly beneficial to many, it’s not uncommon for them to get offers for another company’s exclusive usage.

Next step is that the competition will catch up and improve the product. Remember when Microsoft acquired Skype? Microsoft used it to create their own platform (MS Teams) and other companies like Zoom made their own version of it.

I’ll bet anything that there will be a newer (and possibly better) CapFriendly alternative by the end of the year.

You don't get what the outrage is about? Capfriendly is going offline in a few weeks & you estimate there won't be an alternative until well after the season begins. That could mean upwards of 6 months without a viable alternative. A lot of people (including myself) have multiple rosters set-up on Capfriendly, rely on it for hockey pools and that's all gone now. It's a massive inconvenience that did not exist one day ago.

 

[DWGie26]

Someone was going to buy it. Whoever does gets a competitive edge.

I could see Ted flipping it to the NHL as well. Probably minus a couple of people. Then it could come back online.

but seems to me a good asset to have.

 

[HTFN]

The site was going to be gone from the public anyways.

Source: Capitals to purchase popular salary cap website CapFriendly

This was so obvious I didn't even think it needs said:

If you owned something and a professional sports franchise came to you and said "we want to buy this" and you don't float that to other professional sports franchises first... the f*** were you doing running a contract-based website in the first place? There's virtually no universe in the real world where the Capitals were the only team interested in buying an NHL-centric all-purpose, very easy to use cap interface that we've had in the background of so many behind the scenes shots in critical periods of the season.

Honestly it's even out of character that they won that bid.

You don't get what the outrage is about? Capfriendly is going offline in a few weeks & you estimate there won't be an alternative until well after the season begins. That could mean upwards of 6 months without a viable alternative. A lot of people (including myself) have multiple rosters set-up on Capfriendly, rely on it for hockey pools and that's all gone now. It's a massive inconvenience that did not exist one day ago.

Homie you're talking about fantasy hockey pools. Build some spreadsheets and figure it out, because until your fantasy team is worth multiple millions you're always going to take a back seat to the guy running a real hockey team.

Complaining about an inconvenience with this level of vitriol is something I reserve for teenagers, most people should be able to grapple with the impermanence of the internet era by now.

 

[D0ctorCool]

This was so obvious I didn't even think it needs said:

If you owned something and a professional sports franchise came to you and said "we want to buy this" and you don't float that to other professional sports franchises first... the f*** were you doing running a contract-based website in the first place? There's virtually no universe in the real world where the Capitals were the only team interested in buying an NHL-centric all-purpose, very easy to use cap interface that we've had in the background of so many behind the scenes shots in critical periods of the season.

Honestly it's even out of character that they won that bid.


Homie you're talking about fantasy hockey pools. Build some spreadsheets and figure it out, because until your fantasy team is worth multiple millions you're always going to take a back seat to the guy running a real hockey team.

Complaining about an inconvenience with this level of vitriol is something I reserve for teenagers, most people should be able to grapple with the impermanence of the internet era by now.

And exactly what level of vitriol was I displaying? The situation is frustrating, I understand why it’s happening, but that doesn’t mean people have to be happy about it.

 

[Ovechkins Wodka]

I’ve had a lot of problems with Ted this past year between trying to move the team to Virginia without even telling the fans putting all the television games on monumental sports network, which is pretty much of broken app with no customer service, and now doing the cap friendly thing which doesn’t make much sense a lot of bad taste in the mouth for old Ted, who used to be all about AOL and Internet freedom

 

[HTFN]

And exactly what level of vitriol was I displaying? The situation is frustrating, I understand why it’s happening, but that doesn’t mean people have to be happy about it.

You literally started your post with defending the outrage. That might make sense for you and your personal outrage but some people are taking this and going "wow, f*** the Capitals, most hated team in the league right now" because they're frustrated with a business decision that was always going to be made.

Being mad at the highest bidder is just... goofy. Pretending that ownership spent whatever amount of money just to f*** with fans and their ability to play pretend through the summer is stupid. People don't have to be happy but they do eventually have to come to terms with the fact that this was a business decision that obviously suited the site owners and the team in order to go through.

If you're left outside of that, it does suck, but that's why this isn't wikipedia and is just a site for CBA nerds to do CBA nerd shit that helped a lot of NHL GMs for free.

If you can buy that and trip your competition before the draft/FA you aren't a shithead for doing it. I'm sure real NHL teams are super sorry for what that means to your fantasy league but they're... not, and you should understand that instead of feeling so entitled to a free public resource for a niche league that you're mad about it going away to the point that you want to blame somebody and won't even blame the seller, but the buyer.

 

[trick9]

I’ve had a lot of problems with Ted this past year between trying to move the team to Virginia without even telling the fans putting all the television games on monumental sports network, which is pretty much of broken app with no customer service, and now doing the cap friendly thing which doesn’t make much sense a lot of bad taste in the mouth for old Ted, who used to be all about AOL and Internet freedom

How doesn't this make sense?

They basically poached away the employees that created the best cap -tool there is, before someone else did that. You can make a pretty strong argument that these people are the best in the business, atleast looking from the outside.

 

[Ovechkins Wodka]

This is speculation as of right now, no one has said anything about cap friendly people being added to the front office. If we did a hockey Moneyball, then it might turn out OK