Sometimes, we really should appreciate the things we have because at any point they could be gone. The NHL may be the fourth North American sport, but they had tools that no other sport seemed to have. Websites like Natural Stat Trick, Puck Pedia, Money Puck, Evolving Hockey, and more were beyond what was available from the more popular sports. They are all very user friendly and all have multiple free components. However, arguably the most productive tool was CapFriendly.
Having not only a repository of current contract data, but also adding in past and future contracts, draft history, message boards like Armchair GM was an invaluable source for fans, journalists, and bloggers alike. Everyone was going to CapFriendly because of it's amazing interface and it's price point (free).
Now, that's all going away. According to a report by Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, CapFriendly will go dark in July. In a very capitalism move, the Washington Capitals are going to purchase the website. They said it was "important" to keep it up through the draft and first few days of free agency, but then the Capitals will shut the site down as soon as they gain overship of its infrastructure.
This is a very sad day for hockey. CapFriendly was a source for so much, with just about everyone who has ever written about hockey in the past five years using it as a source. We've used CapFriendly both for serious pieces, speculative pieces, and for those that were just for fun.
This is a sad day. At the end of the day, the CapFriendly crew made a source that brought us hours of entertainment and saved us hours of research. We thank them for their service, but we are upset this is being sold to a Devils rival just so they can take it away from the public eye. It's very big villain era behavior from a team that is still employing Tom Wilson.