Washington Capitals fans are very familiar with CapFriendly which is a tool used to track players' salaries. Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported that the Caps will officially purchase the website in July.
Once the transaction is complete the website will go dark and no longer be available to the public. This is quite honestly a genius move considering other teams use this same module to track salaries.
Right now there's two players who are unsure whether or not their careers will be finished. Other teams across the league have fleeced or attempted to fleece others when it comes to contracts.
July 1 is the beginning of free agency. Friedman states that his sources stressed that both the Caps and CapFriendly wanted the site to be publicly available and independently operated through the 2024 NHL Draft and the beginning of free agency.
Friedman also notes the sale is not expected to be official until at least July 5. Neither the Capitals nor CapFriendly representatives would comment. CapFriendly arrived in 2015 after CapGeek closed. The owner passed away to colon cancer in March of that year. CapFriendly was the alternative after that.
If offical, Caps got this right
Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie are both dealing with a lot. Yesterday on social media Oshie's account got hacked on X and the Caps swiftly responded. You never want sports fans playing armchair general manager and sometimes fanatics will go to crazy lengths to support their team.
The controversy
Another thing folks need to pay for but paid subscriptions have become the norm these days. You need a streaming service for almost everything it seems like. But this doesn't upset me but could see how other fans might not like the move.
An alternative
PuckPedia should see a major gross in traffic once the transaction is official. So if anybody wants to make a trade machine or mock draft there's no issues there. So no, it's not the end of the world that the Caps are buying CapFriendly and it's not a cash grab either.
Hockey reference and Natural Stat Trick also aren't going anywhere, for now at least. The NHL also introduced brand new puck and skate tracking technolgy through NHL Edge. No pun intended, but some teams had more of an edge than others in recent years thanks to CapFriendly but this could both level the playing field and elevate what Brian MacLellan can do this offseason.