[Buff]

Originally Posted by yourbestfriend

My 2cents.
The Caps are buying the interface. The entire system is extremely easy to use and intuitive (GM mode is super fun), so much so that a 65year old Brian MacLellan could use it.
I'm going to guess that most NHL teams (the Caps for sure) don't have an internal tool that is as sophisticated as capfriendly hence the purchase. Wouldn't surprise me at all if most teams are still using excel for their salary cap related work - this is a massive upgrade. I think up until a few years ago the NHL central registry still used fax machines? The Caps now just have to plug this into the now hopefully digital NHL central registry which I think will give them a massive advantage during trade deadline time. The more I think about this, the more i'm shocked this didn't happen earlier.

Good on you for trying to create your own system. However, after reading the article, I would assert that relationships with NHL teams is equally as important as the interface when looking at this kind of tool. I always wondered how they were so accurate and fast in getting contract details - it actually explains a lot that they had relationships with NHL teams (probably all of them) to get information via APIs. These relationships probably took years to develop, I think this is the main hurdle to overcome.

In terms of the Capitals closing it down, it does make sense unfortunately. They get no benefit from keeping it open. They could keep it open publicly as is, but then they'd have to hire a team to maintain it and keep it updated. Not only would they likely lose money doing this, but their also not in the business of maintaining a salary cap website, so why bother.

Overall, sucks for probably everybody on this site and all of the hockey nerds out there. Hopefully we get an alternative soon. Puckpedia is good, but the interface isn't as good nor does it have a lot of the functionality that Capfriendly does.

So... the Caps bought this just for the domain name?