Much to Gary Bettman’s chagrin, there’s a new CapGeek. Presenting General Fanager. Everyone seems to love it. It sure looks sleek. One thing it doesn’t do is calculate how much money and for how many players teams have locked up in future years, but that’s a nitpick. General Fanager feels promising.
On January 3, CapGeek ceased operations because its founder, Matthew Wuest’s health was deteriorating, and ever since, the Hockey Internet has had a void. With CapGeek, any hockey fan or media member could see the salary cap situations for all 30 NHL teams, know which players were signed for how long and for how much, and build their own hypothetical rosters subject to the real life NHL CBA.
CapGeek’s absence was felt far and wide. Sure, there had been imitators; NHL Numbers had one. So did Hockey Buzz. But neither was as easy to use, easy to understand, or as deadly accurate as CapGeek. Wuest’s accuracy was praised even by NHL general managers, who have their own, private version of Cap Geek. Jeff Marek, on the Marek vs. Wyshynski podcast, has mentioned how even NHL player agents he’s spoken to were impressed by how detailed and accurate the site was. Some agents trusted CapGeek so thoroughly as to use it before the private version they have access to, Marek has said.
The leader of the arms race to build a new CapGeek was thought to be war-on-ice. Its team has built a second-to-none advanced stats site, and is in the process of entering salary cap information. One of war-on-ice’s team members, A.C. Thomas, today mentioned some of the challenges war-on-ice, or anyone attempting to build a new CapGeek, faces:
https://twitter.com/acthomasca/status/595693527033618435
https://twitter.com/acthomasca/status/595661069638627330
Thomas is confident that his site will have the most accurate database, in time.
Regardless of which site (or sites) turns out to earn the fans’ trust, General Fanager’s launch today is yet another clear message sent to Gary Bettman by NHL fans. Bettman is on the record saying that interest in CapGeek was driven more by the media, not fans. Which, of course, is a way for Bettman to shield his owners and general managers, who don’t want their mistakes to be so public. But it’s also certifiably wrong. General Fanager has already crashed once due to heavy traffic, and its Twitter page is gaining followers by the minute. (When I started writing this post at 4:28 p.m. Central Time, it had about 6,600 followers. Now, 24 minutes later, it’s up to 7,417).
