The National Hockey League and its inner circle are often criticized for how little information they make publicly available.
Finding anything above baseline player stats is very hard to do on the NHL’s own website. NHL Edge refuses to allow you to find the worst player in a particular category (unless you scroll through the hundreds of names to eventually reach the bottom), and contract information is only loosely compiled and put together.
For NHL fans who wanted to know more about their favorite team’s salary cap circumstances, or for many hockey writers who needed that information to publish pieces, they had to rely on a host of sites that worked day and night to track every trade, signing, extension, waiving, and every other transaction in the league.
CapFriendly was the transaction tracker of our time. It was heavily relied on my fans and media alike, and was even a vital asset for NHL teams and their front offices. In fact, it was so important that the Washington Capitals decided they wanted it all for themselves, purchasing the site and its staff back earlier in the summer.
CapFriendly went dark on July 5th, leaving a huge absence in the hockey world when it did. That vaccum has mostly been filled by PuckPedia, the newest site to take the mantle in the endless cycle of transaction tracker websites. CapFriendly was once the underdog, too.
No matter where people were getting their information on player contracts and an assortment of other information, it was never from the NHL, who refused to create a public forum where this information was readily available to their fan base.
However, at least one NHL team is trying to now buck that trend. The St. Louis Blues announced today their own form of a CapFriendly/PuckPedia-esque site, where Blues fans could get up to date information on player contracts, status, and more.
This new home for data is available as a chapter of the Blues’ website and in the team’s official app.
The initial product is a little rough around the edges, and it certainly doesn’t have the same easy access to other, more in-depth information that a site like PuckPedia now boasts.
It’s more blocky in nature and very much has the feel of a page you could only find on NHL.com.
Obviously, a lot of work could be done to improve the site, but what it lacks in overall design, user-friendliness, and aesthetics, it makes up for in a refreshing way that an NHL team would simply publish this information on their own.
The world of NHL contracts and financials is extremely complicated. Fans often have to learn on their own why decisions made or weren’t made, and why a contract is the way that it is.
If places like CapFriendly and PuckPedia didn’t exist, there would be a massive gap between what fans know and what front offices know.
The NHL as a whole has had a very archaic outlook on something like this, something its fans frequently say about a whole host of things surrounding this league.
However, what the Blues did today is a massive step forward, not just for their own team and fans, but for the league. This move is being very well received by their fan base, and the same would apply to other NHL teams that did the same thing. Hockey fans yearn for knowledge. They want to learn more about the team and players they love.
The Blues could be the ones who started to break down this invisible wall between teams and their fans. Good on them for doing this.
(Featured photo by Matt Krohn/USA Today Sports)
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