NHL’s Dislike of Capfriendly Continues a Pattern for the League

NHL’s Dislike of Capfriendly Continues a Pattern for the League

welcome back uh We’ve debated on this channel many times over about the NHL and the growth of the league and how it could be better and all this fun stuff and with the weekend uh news breaking that um the Washington Capitals are purchasing or have purchased cap friendly and the site’s about to go dark uh that’s led to some interesting discussions about well why would the NHL allow this I saw that why would the NHL why would the NHL want that the NHL doesn’t like cap friendly the NHL doesn’t like that we the fans have access to all that information and there are probably some general managers and owners that just if they were asked their honest opinion would say you know what fans shouldn’t have access to that information the NHL views it as proprietary information that’s for them that’s for their internal stuff and so basically all the ltir stuff we complain about and using cap friendly the NHL probably views that as being a problem like you know what we we we do all our business in house we control all this ourselves we don’t need fans coming in and trying to tell us how to do our business and that would that would be on brand that would absolutely be on brand this is part of the reason why when people say oh why doesn’t the NHL why doesn’t the NHL Network hire the hockey guy my answer to that’s always well a I live on the west coast I’m not moving and B why would they uh they would just view me as being a guy with a a YouTube channel and not adding any value to anything they’re doing um I I can’t see a scenario where they would they would be calling me or emailing me and saying hey we’ve got a job for you I I just don’t see that happening um and cap friendly is something that they’re going to be glad is gone like for instance if I did get some offer from the NHL probably be here’s a lump sum of money stop making videos and my answer to that would be no uh but at any rate uh yeah the the proprietary information part is something that I get I get and yet we as fans having access to this information knowing how far over uh the cap every team is I like having that information the armchair GM part of the site too can be fun uh so the sit’s used for f used by fans GMS players everything and that’s after capgeek went dark uh capgeek was a fun website it ain’t coming back uh I believe with capgeek it was just that the site got so big that the amount of money that was needed to keep it going was too much um so something I learned from this too is apparently there have been you know certain contracts with cap friendly uh where people are you know throwing them some extra money here and there and hey you know websites absolutely that’s that’s understandable um hockey reference is one that I have given money to before I’ve given money to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is a useful asset as well uh anytime I’m doing internet research with the grain of salt when you’re using Wikipedia though you’ve got to have just that little grain of salt of let’s let’s let’s just dig a little bit deeper Wikipedia is not necessarily 100% way better than it was a decade ago but still uh not necessarily 100% so the thing too is I’ve seen people saying well if the capitals have bought it why don’t they leave it public they can’t it is now capitals property uh by the NHL’s own guidelines they would have to shut it down they can’t be giving information on every other team’s cap hit on a website they own right or their their cap flexibility and how much money they have to spend under the cap they just can’t do it but they could track how much money those teams have for themselves and that’s something that they’re going to do uh puckpedia is seen as a replacement yes they’re going to have to upgrade their servers and everything uh but if puckpedia becomes a big deal some other team will probably step in and go here’s some money for that and uh oh sport track here’s some money for that and yeah the NHL would love to have a situation where we as fans just watch the games we’ll still complain about penalties and suspensions and all that stuff but they really I I get the feeling don’t like fans being in all their their their finances and being aware of how much money teams make how much money the teams are worth and how much all the contracts are I think all of this information being publicly available it’s very against the National Hockey League’s whole policies and the way that the League’s been run uh I talk often about how there’s a lot of gatekeeping with hockey fans and there is you know you you go to a hockey game and you’re like I don’t understand um so icing is what exactly you’re going to have you’re going to have somebody probably explain it to you but you’re also going to have uh some some looks of what are you doing here you don’t know the rules and so yeah um now I’m older than a lot of the people who watch the channel and definitely older than some of the other reporters in the space and everything but I can remember when the NHL didn’t reveal how much money they made didn’t reveal term necessarily either uh or the stipulations that went with it and some GMS wouldn’t tell you anything and there are definitely some GMS and L larell is one that comes to mind immediately that if you made it so tomorrow you don’t have to report what the contracts are worth you don’t have to report on stipulations the Islanders immediately stop reporting on anything so the angal contract we’d have no idea and I think the NHL would love to go back to a world where that was the case where that information wasn’t necessarily known I’m old enough also to remember when owners would get together whenever there was a lock out some sort of a fight with the union and they would they would sit down and go hey we are here for the fans we are really concerned about ticket prices if we give these players what they want your ticket prices are going to go through the roof and that’s not fair to you as fans we have tremendous concerns for the fans then uh the lockout would be settled and ticket prices would go up by 20% cuz in reality the owners are about profits really like the profits can we have more profits profits are important that’s basically it and and I watched something yesterday talking about corporations and all of the things that they do to try to show that they’re inclusive and they’re different and they’re special and they’re wonderful but in reality most corporations their concern is so how much money did we make how much money were we going to make and does this does this cause make us money does this does this this day that we’re going to celebrate this or remember this does that actually make us money and if the answer is no then all right well that’s that’s gone then and that’s basically how the NHL’s done things as well uh the ongoing denial of CTE extended past the lawsuit they settled the lawsuit from former players arguing that their their con their concussion issues after they played the game uh were from playing the game and the NHL and Gary bman himself have all said no no so even though football has stepped up and the NFL has said yep all right and even the I’m going to say right off uh the NFL has not been great about paying football players either I’m not going to stand here and and wave a flag for the NFL and say they’ve been great but they did admit there’s a connection and then when players are saying can we have our money now it’s like well I mean you could have your money but right now it’s our money and we really would like to keep at our money so sorry about the concussion but uh no so um and and there are there are players that are having to fight with the NFL for that money um and with the NHL settling a class action lawsuit what does that do means you can’t bring another lawsuit the NHL NHL can be like we already settled that it’s done it’s gone so the lawsuit it it was gone there were players who weren’t happy about the settlement being made um I would imagine there are some current NHL players that weren’t happy about the settlement being made either but the NHL doesn’t want the reality that these players that are you know 6’4 220 lbs all crashing into each other at full speed it’s going to lead to head injuries uh we all focus on oh that’s a direct hit to the Head it doesn’t have to be a direct hit to the head to cause a concussion it just doesn’t uh my old workplace working in first aid I saw concussions where somebody did not hit their head and that was something we were taught when I when I learned first aid so I always find this weird when people are like well it’s not direct head contact so and they make it sound like it’s not necessarily that bad when there might be a whiplash effect on that hit and I’m I’m not saying the NHL has to come in and just get rid of all the big hits but for the NHL not to a that all those big hits over time don’t lead to further issues with your health down the road that’s a bit of a problem isn’t it because clearly it does if if you guys watch me in videos and I’m like hey I’ve been smacking my head smacking my head with a frying pan for four years head’s starting to hurt people are going to be like I think it’s the frying pan the NHL would be like not our problem so the stuff that I’m too young to remember if we want to go further back than that uh Ted Lindsay Ted Lindsay tried to form the Union uh eventually the union did get formed the NHL punished him by sending to the Blackhawks which it would and and the way to put this is it would be like tell having um Sydney Crosby come out and say okay I’m organizing a union and then the NHL being like so you want to go to the Sharks all right well you’re going to the Sharks then it’s a shame he’s going to the Sharks he’s not going to win another Stanley Cup there but we got to send a message and of course that wouldn’t fly now you can’t get away with that now but back then they owned the players the owners this wasn’t just they owned the team they owned the players the players had absolutely no freedom of movement unless the owners said so so this is a league that you go back far enough the owners just controlled everything every aspect and we didn’t know how much the money the players made I don’t even know if NHL players knew what everybody in the locker room made back then um and the league was pretty Petty when it came to the wh coming into the NHL and the reason this is noteworthy is because uh they were Petty towards the wa for the fact that they were paying players a pretty good wage they were willing to spend big money to bring in guys like Bobby Hall and Jerry chers and therefore the NHL resented them for it because all of a sudden they had to start paying more money or they were going to watch the talent drain continue to the wh so when we look at the contracts now and the money people get paid now part of what gets that jump started in the early and mid 80s is the wh and the fact that that once those salaries started to go up and we started to get a public Declaration of how much these players were getting paid uh all of a sudden owners had to be a little more generous with their money uh when they really didn’t want to be this is a league that again and it this this absolutely comes back to this you have a league that doesn’t want to pay players what they can make it’s not like the wh was paying monies that the NHL could not afford to pay it was just they didn’t want to the NHL doesn’t want us to know all the information about ltir doesn’t want us to know all the information about uh who’s over the cap and not they want you to buy the merch they want you to pay for the tickets uh if you want to complain about the officiating that’s fine but they’re not going to be transparent with that either that’s why I don’t talk about the officiating and the transparency with officiating because it’s not going to happen uh early in this Channel’s run I would talk about certain calls and I I just found that it was pointless so I just I just left it and it’s it’s not a matter of me waving a white flag and and not fighting the good fight it’s that who would I be fighting the good fight with basically an internet Community because the NHL uh in general unless something affects their bottom line which comes back to you know it being corporate unless it affects their bottom line probably nothing’s going to happen there uh it it it is going to be interesting to see um with cap friendly going out and with other sites coming in to take that space uh if other teams will then buy those sites as as well and again we’re now in the information age everything’s on the internet we have all this there is nothing stopping you from being able to write down how much everybody makes there’s nothing to stop you and friends of yours from making a website where you track how much everybody makes and how much teams have left in salary cap space and all that fun stuff uh but the NHL would really rather that you didn’t uh the NHL doesn’t generally want us to have this and this is part of the reason why when you watch press conference you and you think to yourself uh that bman looks kind of irritated with some of the questions cuz he is he doesn’t want that information to be out there and it’s just yeah uh this this is part of the reason why when somebody mentions a rival League you’re going to hear the oh I hope we get a rival League that’s going to succeed but there’s so much involved in startup costs and trying to run a rival League that it’s just not going to happen it’s not feasible um again you can get a whole bunch of rich people together but you have building leases and cities and all it it’s really and then all the all the costs with travel and equipment and everything it’s just it’s so much hockey is so very expensive to play it’s very expensive to go to a game and watch if you’re watching an NHL game and uh it it’s just it’s pricey in general I would imagine running a team you have all kinds of costs when it comes to running a hockey team so there you go um I I I know that there are times where people will say well you know he’s just making excuses for the NHL and I’ve been told that I’m being paid by the NHL which no never been paid by the NHL uh because again why would they what reason on planet Earth does the NHL have to pay me um yes I’ve done a lot of videos over the years a lot of subscribers and all that but to them it doesn’t add anything to their bottom line they don’t see a direct correlation to their bottom line so that’s why I’ve never been surprised that I don’t get email or some kind of contact from somebody at the NHL saying hey we’d love to have you on and and talk to you about or hey you know yeah have these phone calls with Gary wouldn’t it be funny if you actually talked to Gary for real and you played one of these yeah it’d be great it’s never going to happen um I did at one point actually try contacting Gary bman um along the lines of I would love to have an interview and just talk about the NHL and you know I I wasn’t going to be like a goty interview just talk about the National Hockey League and maybe bring up stuff that others don’t during the the State of the Union type stuff that he does before the Stanley Cup Final and at various times of the year but I don’t see it happening it’s a very opaque league and it’s one that wants to stay that way and so a site like cap friendly they don’t mind it being gone by the wayside they don’t mind you not having access to all that information anymore and I would expect that again other websites are going to crop up those sites are probably going to get bought by other teams as well so for the guys running popedia it’s probably going to be expensive for the next little while to to add to their server load and and try to figure out a way to make all the traffic work and all the upgrades they’re going to need to do but in the end it’s probably going to be good for their for their bank accounts they’re probably going to make money and again I don’t have any ill will towards cap friendly here at all they they built up a website they’ve spent years and years and years tracking every single movement made by the NHL and its teams and now they’ve cashed in and that’s that’s sort of you know the American dream um or or I guess in Canada it’s like having all the maple syrup I don’t I don’t know we don’t have that version up here but anyways uh yeah let me know your thoughts in the comments section below as always don’t forget to hit like And subscribe if you haven’t done so already thank you guys so much for all your support I will talk to you again soon

Fans are upset that a great resource has been bought and is about to go dark. The reality is, the NHL is fine with fans not having that information and probably would be fine with media not having it either.

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