The Washington Capitals sent shockwaves through the hockey world when it was revealed on Sunday that they purchased the popular salary-cap site CapFriendly and will be shuttering it for public use.
Washington plans to keep the site up through the 2024 NHL Draft and the beginning of free agency but lock it down permanently upon sale closure in early July. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek extensively discussed the news and the NHL league office’s reaction to the sale on the latest episode of the 32 Thoughts Podcast.
“The NHL believes they should not be in the business of publishing this stuff,” Friedman said. “As a matter of fact, I have been told several times that the relationship between the NHL and CapFriendly was quite icy. It’s not only the league that feels that way, I’ve heard some teams are adamant about that too. They don’t feel that NHL.com should be in the business of publishing this kind of stuff.”
Among other resources, CapFriendly’s tools offer data on individual players’ salaries, contract terms, and rights under the CBA, as well as teams’ total cap hits. The site also explains CBA provisions including LTIR, entry-level contracts, free agency, and more.
The site has been an invaluable asset to fans, reporters, and even staff from many teams in the league. But, all of that goes away in a few weeks when Washington takes control.
“One team told me that even if [the Capitals] wanted to [keep the site open], they wouldn’t have been allowed to,” Friedman said. “The NHL frowns on the existence of sites like this. They consider it proprietary information so the Capitals couldn’t keep it open if they wanted to. The league would say you cannot be partner to this and have it be public and also you couldn’t make any money from it on any ads.”
With the shutdown, mandatory or not, quickly approaching, Friedman says many teams around the league have been caught off guard without any current plan B. July 5 is the rumored complete shuttering date and a huge portion of the offseason remains after that.
The deadline for player-selected salary arbitration notifications, the deadline for second club-elected salary arbitration notifications, and the eventual salary arbitration hearings will all fall either on July 5 or in the month or so after. There is also a potential buyout window open for teams with players that opt for arbitration once those hearings are settled.
According to Friedman, 70 percent of teams do not have an internal, salary cap infrastructure.
“There are some teams scrambling today, no question about it,” Friedman said. “There are a couple people that have said to me that there will be some teams that don’t have this kind of infrastructure that will be like, ‘Oh no, we’re in trouble here.’ Here are the teams I know of that have something [internally] where they can say, ‘Okay, we’ve got a backup plan here for when this goes offline.’ Seattle, New Jersey, Carolina, Chicago, Islanders, Toronto, Columbus, Vegas, and Pittsburgh. The other teams will have various degrees of concern and worry about where they’re going to go here.”
Marek explained that the Capitals purchasing CapFriendly allows the organization to avoid sinking money and time into developing essentially the same thing that’s available publicly.
“They want something like [CapFriendly] for internal purposes and instead of hiring a bunch of people and spending time and resources to build one and then waiting for it for essentially upwards of two years, you can just spend the same money and buy CapFriendly,” Marek said.
Friedman concurred and added his belief that the Capitals are also set to hire two of the main men behind the site, Dominik Zrim and Jamie Davis, to help them run it.
“I believe not only are the Capitals purchasing the tools and the infrastructure but I also believe that at least one if not two of the top people at CapFriendly are going to be working for the team and help run [the infrastructure] for them internally,” Friedman said. “Dominik Zrim, one of the co-founders, he has already worked for Chicago and San Jose so he’s got some experience but also Jamie Davis who is another one of the main people behind the scenes. He could be working for the Capitals, too.”
Zrim, owner and co-director of CapFriendly, has previously served as Director of Salary Cap Management and CBA Compliance for the San Jose Sharks and Manager of Hockey Strategy for the Chicago Blackhawks. Davis has no prior NHL job experience and is listed as Vice President and Full Stack Developer of CapFriendly on his LinkedIn page.
The two would likely join forces with the Capitals’ current salary cap guru, Don Fishman. Fishman is nearing two decades of employment with the Capitals as an assistant general manager and the director of legal affairs.
“Fishman leads the club’s salary cap and contract decisions as well as advises the team president on policy and strategic decisions and real estate matters,” the Capitals’ management page reads on their website. “He handles player contract negotiations, player contract research and analysis, the club’s day-to-day salary cap position, team salary cap strategic planning, the salary arbitration process, NHL and team salary cap analysis, and interpretation of NHL/NHLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) issues.”
Both Friedman and Marek also agreed that the move makes even more sense when you acknowledge that Ted Leonsis owns the Capitals. Leonsis is a former high-level tech executive with AOL.
“A couple guys said to me, ‘Doesn’t it make sense, it’s Ted Leonsis?’ That would be right up his alley,” Friedman said.
“That’s kinda where I was going to go too on this one earlier,” Marek added. “This very much does fit the profile of Ted Leonsis. This exactly fits. This is very on-brand for Ted Leonsis.”
