The popular hockey salary cap website, CapFriendly, officially shut its doors on Wednesday.
A thank you message appeared on every page of the site, reading:
Thank You!
After 9 years of late nights, early mornings, missed holidays and family events while diligently updating the website and developing tools, the CapFriendly team has made the decision to begin a new chapter and challenge!
We couldn’t be more thankful for the support and interest in CapFriendly our fans have shown over the years.
We’d also like to give a special thank you to:
- Guillaume Lambert-Heon (French Translations)
- Tim Hiebert (Depth Charts)
- CapFriendly Forum moderators
- Evolving-Hockey
- Sportsnet
- Sports Interaction
- Elite Prospects
- Jason Bukala and The Pro Hockey Group
- Steve Dangle, Adam Wylde, and Jesse Blake of SDPN
- The Daily Faceoff and Frank Seravalli
- Those who reached out to assist us with suggestions and corrections
Sincerely,
The CapFriendly Team
CapFriendly’s public end comes after it was purchased by the Washington Capitals for private use. The acquisition was first reported by Sporstnet’s Elliotte Friedman on June 9.
Former Capitals’ general manager Brian MacLellan explained in a statement earlier in the summmer that CapFriendly would “significantly enhance and integrate the various branches of our hockey operations department, allowing us to strengthen our management, scouting, analytics and player development, in addition to augmenting our salary cap and contractual applications.”
The Capitals also brought on CapFriendly’s Jamie, Ryan, and Christopher Davis to their internal team to help run the site.
The purchase was received icily by fans and other NHL teams as over half of the front offices around the league do not have salary cap infrastructure of their own. Friedman listed just 9 of 32 teams that did.
“I don’t think anybody’s happy,” MacLellan said. “The whole industry is not very happy about it.”
MacLellan admitted that part of their purchase was due to their own personal anxieties that they’d eventually be put in the same position.
“We spent a lot of time on [the site],” MacLellan has since added. “I think I’m on it every day, or I was on it every day. I’ll still be on it now. It’s a valuable tool. We have a lot of respect for what they created. Our biggest fear was it was going to go away and we weren’t going to be able to use it.”
There are some alternatives out there. Puckpedia tracks NHL salary caps and Sportrac is a good reference for NHL contracts. But today officially marks the end of an era.
Thanks for everything, CapFriendly website. You will be missed. And, oh yeah, one last thing.
