Capitals’ purchase of Capfriendly.com hard hit to info flow

The one-stop shop for salary cap figures and projections, as well as all sorts of nifty calculators used by fans, agents, the media and teams is going dark in early July after the stunning news that the Washington Capitals have purchased the site and infrastructure, and hired its creators for their front office. It will stay available through the draft and the early days of free agency.

The site was born in 2015 to fill the void of CapGeek.com, which went dark when creator Matthew Wuest died at 35 after a two-year battle with colon cancer. And it has performed brilliantly, serving as an invaluable tool for the hockey world.

“The Capitals have agreed to acquire CapFriendly, including its tools and functions, for its in-house hockey operations department,” Washington General Manager Brian MacLellan said in a statement. “This strategic move will provide the Capitals organization with the ability to digest, present and analyze both our internal- and League-supplied data. … We anticipate that this acquisition will 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.”

In essence, the Caps are taking CapFriendly’s vast structure and using it as their own rather than build an in-house system. It’s known that the site had been partnering with some teams but sent them cancellation notices when this deal was struck. It’s so accurate and credible that teams and agents freely provide it with information on contracts, and reporters routinely private message the site with questions and chatter during hot times on the league calendar.

CapFriendly does an amazing job with cap and actual salary figures. With bonuses. With lists of free agents. With calculators to build team cap figures, or to figure out what buyouts might look like. In seconds, you can learn what it would cost each year for the Sabres to buy out Jeff Skinner for six years (cap hits of $1,444,445, followed by $4,444,445 and $6,444,445 and three years of $2,444,445 each).

Fans and reporters have other options. PuckPedia.com  has said it’s working on upgrades to its site, a process that’s undoubtedly getting sped up in the wake of this news. Spotrac.com also has NHL information but is considered much more a place for info on the NFL and is not hockey-centric. But they’re not remotely CapFriendly right now and will be hard-pressed to reach that level.

The NHL clearly should have brought CapFriendly into its purview long ago. The league, however, continues to frown on running any part of its site to include cap information. Commissioner Gary Bettman laughably said at a Stanley Cup Final a few years ago that fans didn’t have much interest in the information and putting it on a league site was a “media-drive” issue.

Wrong. Fans do care. It’s a huge part of following the league. In a hard-cap system, the reason your team makes its roster moves is very often because of the cap and no other motivation. The league should have brought all this great information under its umbrella. Too late now.

Gnawing thought as we watched the Panthers slice through the Stanley Cup Final: What if the Sabres had squeezed past them into the playoffs in 2023 and left Florida on the outside looking in?

The Panthers, remember, were a 122-point team coming off a Presidents’ Trophy win that changed coaches and made the seismic trade of Jonathan Huberdeau for Matthew Tkachuk. But it didn’t go well for them until late last season when backup Alex Lyon went on a 6-0 heater – including a key 2-1 April win over the Sabres – that got them in the playoffs.

Panthers coach Paul Maurice has routinely joked about what a “genius” he was last year for turning his club into a 92-point outfit that edged the Sabres by a point. And let’s not forget that Boston’s Brad Marchand had a last-season breakaway in regulation of Game 5 that would have eliminated the Panthers in Round 1, before they got all the way to the final against Vegas.

Never know what moves the Panthers would have made with their roster heading into this season if they were a non-playoff team or first-round loser instead of the defending East champion. When Maurice was asked prior to Game 3 in Edmonton what his mission was when taking over last season, he had a direct answer that was a window into the Panthers’ new world the last two years after they were ousted by sweeps at the hands of in-state rival Tampa Bay in 2021 and 2022.

“Play a style of game that you can play in the playoffs. Playoff hockey is different. We talk about this in training camp. It’s hard,” Maurice said. “The buy-in isn’t from the coach. It’s nothing I’ve done. It is the players’ willingness. So the running joke in the coaches office here is ‘Be careful what you tell them to do because they’re going to do exactly that.’

“We’ve worked very hard in the belief for our veteran corps over the last two years. This is Game 204 (counting regular season and playoffs). We’ve been working really, really hard for 204 games to get to this.”

When I met with Sabres coach Lindy Ruff last week, the Panthers came up a couple of times during the conversation. Ruff said the depth throughout the Panthers’ roster and they level of play they maintain is impressive.

“Terrific goaltending to start (from Sergei Bobrovsky) and I think their defense was a little underrated but I don’t think they are anymore,” Ruff said. “And that group of forwards is just really, really good. (Aleksander) Barkov is obviously one of the best two-way players in the league, one of the hardest guys to play against in both zones.

“You’ve got (Matthew) Tkachuk, one of the hardest guys to play against around the front of the net. They’ve got goal scoring. Sam Reinhart, (Carter) Verhaeghe. It comes from different places. They’re the real deal. Look at all the problems they cause everywhere.”

Patrick Williams, AHL beat writer for the league and NHL.com, offered some nifty nuggets on the Calder Cup rematch between Coachella Valley (Seattle) and Hershey (Washington) that opened with Friday’s 4-3 Coachella victory in Chocolate Town.

This series is the first time the same NHL organizations have battled for the Calder Cup in back-to-back years since 1979, when Maine (Philadelphia) beat New Haven (New York Rangers) for the second straight year. Hershey won last year in overtime in Game 7. Springfield beat Rochester in a six-game series in 1990 and 1991, but Springfield had different affiliations (New York Islanders and Hartford). Those Sabres-stocked Amerks teams were coached by John Van Boxmeer and Don Lever, respectively.

This will be the fourth time that Coachella Valley coach Dan Bylsma, who is heading to Seattle after the series, and Hershey’s Todd Nelson are meeting in the finals, and Nelson has won the first three: As players (Portland over Moncton, 1994), assistant coaches (Chicago over Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, 2008), and head coaches (Hershey-Coachella Valley, 2023).

Coachella Valley flew to Pennsylvania on Sunday to adjust to Eastern time but the Bears blew their 3-0 series lead against Cleveland and needed overtime in Game 7 on Wednesday to survive. Had they lost, the league was chartering a flight to load both Coachella Valley and Cleveland on the same charter to start the series out west.

Instead, the Firebirds got in some practices on the ice and some team bonding off it.

“We came here and we ended up renting an Airbnb like 45 minutes away that fit the whole team, so we all got out there,” Coachella Valley forward and Williamsville native Andrew Poturalski told InsideAHLHockey.com. “We cooked a big team dinner pretty much like we’re a big family. Everybody was chipping in cooking different things. And yeah, we had a sauna and a cold plunge at the place, which was pretty cool.”

When Canisius University announced its 2024-25 hockey schedule last week, the highlight of the nonconference slate was a Sabres-tinged pair of games against defending Big Ten champion Michigan State on Oct. 25-26 in LECOM Harborcenter.

The Spartans are coached by former Sabres video coach Adam Nightingale, the brother of Sabres assistant director of scouting Jason Nightingale. Their roster includes Slovak defenseman Maxim Strbak, the Sabres’ second-round draft pick last year, as well as Buffalo Jr. Sabres/St. Francis product Patrick Geary.

And the roster could include potential No. 2 overall draft pick Artyom Levshunov, who has a decision to make about returning to school or going to the NHL, likely to Chicago at No. 2 or Anaheim at No. 3.

The Spartans will be the first Big Ten team to come to Harborcenter since Canisius lost the 2015 opener to Penn State, 4-2. The Griffs, who opened the building in 2014 against Ohio State, lost a two-game set last season at Michigan State, 6-3 and 4-3.