Hello to all my Cap-Friendlies out there! If you've been following along with Capped, you'll recognize that opening sentence, as that is how I liked to welcome all of my readers back. Now, I guess I have to come up with a new intro? Last weekend I got a text from a good buddy, "So the Capitals bought CapFriendly and after the draft the website is gone?" It was the first I'd heard of the acquisition and of course had to do a deep dive, as CapFriendly not only was a site that I would be on probably too much for my own good, but it's also what I use on most days to provide you all with Capped each week during the fantasy hockey season. The last Ramblings had great insight into this as well, but I felt that being the author of the world's now-#1 NHL salary cap article, I felt that I had to come in and give some thoughts here.

My initial reaction to the sale was that now Ted Leonsis and the Capitals front office bought the site to just sit there and play armchair GM, but they're smart businesspeople (despite my thoughts on the stadium debacle there), who probably know that they could use armchair GM for free. So why buy? Because now the Capitals have a resource that the rest of the league does not, along with (I would guess), hiring the folks on that created and maintained the site. I'm not sure if the price of this will ever be made public, but we do know that the info on CapFriendly will be soon not be, as the data that will be housed there will be an entity solely to the Caps…Caps-Friendly?

I've said it here on this article before, that CapFriendly was a gift that we have and there was truly nothing like it in any other sport. Mainly because baseball doesn't have a hard cap, basketball you now just pay two players a max contract with the second apron coming into effect next season, and football doesn't have a salary cap. I don't care what the NFL says, you can't convince me that their salaries or cap are real. I know I've referenced here that I have my sad, sad Blackhawks text thread, and I remember back in 2018-'19 range, that I suggested that the Hawks should create their own site like CapGeek (at the time) to have all salary, draft pick, and LTIR data in-house for their own use. Some clubs may have something like this, or just a well-put together Excel spreadsheet, but if the rumors are true that multiple clubs were looking to bid on CapFriendly then I would think that this was something that clubs were using on a regular basis.

While I'm not writing for Capped and Looking Ahead, I spend my time in the marketing world, and back in 2016 my company purchased another agency to merge with and I remember my boss at the time telling me, this is what it's all about. You build a business, and someone comes along with an offer and all of a sudden, you're in your 40's and retired…or working for an NHL team, which is possibly the case here. Also in my mind, that's better than retirement. You guys, I don't know if I'll ever be able to slow down.

So, what happens next? I'd argue that CapFriendly was the one of the most important hockey websites we have, most important being DobberHockey.com of course, but I can remember when CapGeek was the go-to for cap info, then CapFriendly, and now it looks like the new crown will go to PuckPedia. I've used their platform before and it's fine, but I'm sure that the product that we see on their site now will look drastically different come season's start. Moving forward, what's to say that an NHL club wouldn't look to purchase a site like Natural Stat Trick or something of that nature? If it's a competitive advantage, NHL organizations will look to utilize it. I also want to point out what was mentioned in the Ramblings yesterday, that we have excellent tools on Frozen Tools! There's no reason why Dobber shouldn't be your one stop information superhighway for all things fantasy hockey.

I also have seen comments on if NHL.com would launch their own part of the site that lists salary cap info. Quick answer there – no chance. The NHL doesn't even break news on contracts or LTIR as that falls on each individual club. In my mind this would also be like if TSN or SN listed the salaries of their personalities and as much as I'd want to know how much Gene Principe makes, that information is between employee and employer. So, for now, there'd be no way to find salary data on NHL but at least we have NHL Edge. Impress your all your friends by telling them that Nathan MacKinnon has the most speed bursts over 22mph!

Moving forward here I will be keeping my pulse on all thing's salary cap related, be it players or the clubs themselves as it relates to the cap ceiling and floor. Of course, I'm sad to see a site that I would frequent go dark, but it's happened in the past and we survived. The conversation surrounding NHL salaries isn't going to magically disappear come July 1^st, if anything it'll ramp up for a bit with the free agent summer frenzy getting underway.

I hope that everyone out there is enjoying the Cup Finals and are having an enjoyable summer! Talk soon, all.

*Salary Cap data from CapFriendly.com…thank you for loaning it to me one last time, Alex Ovechkin!

For continued fantasy news and notes, follow me on Twitter @ndySanz.