Some breaking news last night. Big breaking news. Bigger perhaps than Soapy feet. Perhaps. Why don't they call it... I guess the new name for the site is Caps friendly.

Yeah. No, more like Caps. Hell out. You know what I mean? Cap friendly. Every Internet user who doesn't know how things work.

Cap friendly has reportedly been sold to the Washington Capitals. Caps friendly. You get it? You see? Yes. Now, this is not the first time this has happened. If you remember, our good friend Tom Porashka ran a site called General Fanaja. Yeah. And he sold it to the Vegas Goldenights. And what happened? What happened? What happened? Stanley Cup finals appearances in six years. One of them was a win.

Instant success. I saw so many people go, Why would the Capitals do this as if the Vegas Goldenights aren't currently Stanley Cup champions?

Yeah.

Guys, come on. Come on. Listen, I'm going to miss the site, too. I'm sad about it. Happy for their success. Yeah.

Well, and I Everyone cheers for your success until you actually find it. Well, I was really surprised by the amount of people who are like, I don't like this. I would never sell. Okay.

Yeah, you would.

Yeah, you would.

And even if you wouldn't-And you would have done it for less.

Here's the thing. Even if you wouldn't, just be happy for people. They can make their own decisions, and they don't really need your input on that. Those guys that ran that site, we saw them in Nashville. We've been in touch with the CapFriendly guys for years, and they are kind, professional, helpful. They are on the ball all the time. And whenever we reach out, they've always been there to help. So for me, I'm thrilled for them. They deserve all this success. And look at them. They get to go work for an NHL team.

Well, and you know what they used to do? Because remember, they weren't able to get credentials.

Yes, I do remember that.

They would show up to the draft, the three of them, I think, in full suits, blazing hot Nashville, remember? And they would all show up with their laptops, and they would update the site from their seats that they bought in their suits.

Yeah. And they were at our event last year, too.

Yes, they were.

They were in the corner. Very nice guys. But they barely talked to anybody because they were on their phones the whole time trying to update the site.

They were, yeah. Which was amazing. It's like, okay, we have 10 minutes set aside to socialize and speak to other humans. Yeah. And then they would go right back to running one of the most important websites in hockey. And that's why people are sad about it.

Well, I think it's okay to be sad about that and also not say, You're a bunch of sellouts. Just, man, let people do something good. It's good for them. And you know what? There are other sites available, and we'll shout out our friends at Pugpedia, who are another... That's another great site that you can go to, not for sale, from what I understand.

Well, and you know what's funny? I think they used to be a part of the Nation Network, and now they're independent again. I don't really understand how all that worked. But you know what I'm seeing is some people saying it's not as... Puckpedia is not as user friendly or whatever as Cap friendly. People forget, and maybe it's because you got to talk to us old, but that was the complaint when Capgeek stopped operating.

And then General Manager took over. Capgeek was the original one.

I want to say it was Capgeek. That was the original. Then General Fanager and a really early stage CapFriendly were going at it. I remember people being like, Well, neither of these sites are even usable.

I didn't mind them.

Well, they got better. No, they were good, but we were used to CapGeek, which at the time was a preposterous standard.

And what was the story there?

Matthew West.

Right.

Unfortunately passed away. And it was the first site of its kind that I can think of. There were others talking about, Oh, I ran something like this or I started this in 2006 or whatever. I wasn't familiar with it. It was the first big site of its kind with the salary cap. General Fanaiger took over, went away, and that was messy, too, because supposedly they were going to go to the Nation Network, and then they ended up going to Vegas, a decision that I don't think they regret on account of they have a Stanley Cup ring now. Capfriendly took over. Dominic Zrim, who founded, I believe CapFriendly, worked for the Sharks, worked for the Black Hawks. I assume they're going to work for the Capitals now. I don't know how that works, actually, because the last few years, to my understanding, while doing work for those two NHL teams, they haven't been running the site. It's been the Davis Brothers.

Yes. So But it might still be an investment or whatever, and we don't know.

Might still be. I have no idea. And now we still have Puckpedia.

Yeah.

I mean, none of this would be a problem if the NHL just did it themselves.

Well, that would be a problem. Because the NHL doesn't... I think this type of site can only really exist outside of NHL. Com. Would it be illegal? Because it would require... Well, I don't know if it would be illegal. Probably, yeah, salary disclosure is probably not something that they're technically allowed to do.

I mean, it's like Sportsnet listing everyone's salary on the website.

But you're talking about... One of the things that like, NHL. Com can't do is they can't break news. They have to wait until the team has announced it, and then they can write a story about it. So a team like the islanders, you just get a bunch of dashes. You wouldn't get anything. You need reporters on it. You need it to be private or part of a larger network because the NHL has no impetus to make a site like that good or work or be updated. Right? Whereas a site which can draw a bunch of clicks the way CapFriendly and Puckpedia do, have the opportunity to make some money off of that. Where the NHL, that's not their core business. They don't care. Look at NHL Edge. It's useful It's fine. Getting better. It's getting better. But it's not what it needs to be. And again, that's not the NHL's focus.

You know, Adam, one of us has been very quiet. And one of us knows, I think perhaps more than two of us, Jesse Cee Blake. You just recorded the CJ show with CJ, and I believe this was a topic.

Yeah, it was. And it was... Cj's reaction to it was, I think, the appropriate one in that he's just happy for that.

I hate those Oh, oh, oh.

I think it's like, Hey, this has happened several times with the hockey community where we lose the cap site that we had. This is just Groundhog Day again, and you're really happy for all the guys at CapFriendly who get, I assume, some payday, and they get to continue working in the NHL. They get to go work for an NHL team, which is awesome.

But, Jesse, how does this affect the Mefs?

What is that?

The me.

Instead of the Leeps.

It's me. Here I'll tell you what I would do if I was in that, you're not in that situation.

I asked CJ. I was like, a lot of the outrage is people who think there's something nefarious done on the side of the Capitals, and it's very cut and dry. This is It's a shrewd business decision by Ted Leonsis and co. I haven't been a fan of how he's handled any of the arena situations in Washington at all, but he's been a very good businessman in the media space over the last... His decades long run as a very successful businessman. This is just another competitive advantage that he saw. Apparently, there were other suiters for CapFriendly, and they came to the table with some the best offer and the best situation. Behind the scenes, CapFriendly was working with NHL teams. There were certain APIs. They link to backends of teams operations in their home cities. That's how you make money, right? Yeah. They did work with NHL teams. The reason this came to light that it got leaked is because they terminated those contracts. The teams that were working with CapFriendly, they got the notice that, Hey, the Washington is going to buy all of this information, and that's going to be shut down. So this got leaked out.

For them, it's just, Hey, good for you. We'll We'll move on as a hockey collective public, and we'll find some other way to get salary information. But right now, good move by the Washington Capitals, shutting it down for everybody else, not having the ability to access it publicly. We've seen lots of screenshots of... There's one of, Is it Dorian who's in his office in Ottawa? There's a screenshot of him using CapFriendly on a team photo, which is just cool because you know how far that site reached. Now the Washington Capitals did something smart, and they gained all the people there and the information. Kudos to them, and kudos to the CapFriendly guys for a cool moment.

Yeah. Puckpedia is now going to get a pretty big windfall. Yeah. Excited for them.

Yeah, 25 traffic is going to be a big year for them.

If you're not happy, I think you nailed it with like, Hey, CapFriendly wasn't always the infrastructure that it is right now. They built to this moment, and Puckpedia maybe is not Cap friendly right now, but now with all of this new traffic, they can build to that. And all of that new traffic is going to drive revenues for them, and they can add more features that you want. It'll be fine. We're all going to survive this. It's all right.

Speaking of new features, Cap friendly, we discussed, Hey, it'd be good if your site had this. It'd be good if your site had that. And then they added it to the site, which means if the Caps win the Stanley Cup, I get a ring, all right?

What? It's not that much.

I want one. Yeah, because I contributed like 0.000001% to that website. So I want a ring. That's how it works. I'm like the Black Ace who plays five AHL games and gets to hoist the cup.

That's me. I want to get on the ice. I I think a big congratulations go to those guys for how hard they worked and how much understanding they brought, too. One of the things that I think, if you have a reasonable reaction to this, one of the things I think you're thinking, which is, man, they really helped me understand this cap, which is not easy to understand. They did videos, they did educational tutorials and things like that. If you wanted to, you could look all that up. I wonder if that all goes away, too, probably.

Yeah, the site's shutting down.

Yeah. What the YouTube videos, and stuff like that.

After free agency.

Yeah. That's one thing we should note, too. They've committed to keeping the site open for draft and free agency, so it doesn't officially shut down until July fifth. So you have until then to access CapFund.

I saw some people go, Oh, that's good of them. And I'm like, Yeah, it is.

Well, also, their contracts probably go till after draft free agency as well. Whatever teams that are using their service, they can't just terminate it like that. There's probably a latency period. Like, Here's a 30-day termination.

But the public gets it, too. I don't give a damn about the team.

Well, I know, but that's probably the main source.

Yeah, but they could have shut it down for the public is the point. There's no contract with the public. They could have kept it open for the teams and everything. But the fact that they left it open for the public is cool.

I understand there is CapFriendly premium, and some people were griping about that. I don't know enough about it, but hopefully everyone involved is made whole or whatever is left satisfied. I I guess you're not going to be satisfied because it's going away, but good for them, man. It's just Matt West, when he started CapGeek, was solo. Capfriendly, I don't know enough about their humble beginning things, but they grinded for a number of years before the site was really relevant. Tom Porasca, who won a Stanley Cup with the Vegas Goldenites, we had him on our show in 2015 or '16. He began the site to teach himself how to code. That's cool. These are all like...

That's very cool.

Great triumphs of hockey fans. Like, these are fans who started something and helped the rest of us. This is why I keep yelling about the league, and I wish the league would do more. These are fans helping fans. Yes.

Well, and I think, again, we congratulate them. And don't worry, there's other sites doing it, too. And as businesses grow, it's funny, they don't just start at 10 out of 10, great. They have to build up, and sometimes you have to go back down, and then you have to build up even more. And then that's how it works.

I wonder what this means for salary swish, which I think they just started this season. It's basically Cap from the basketball.

If they're good at that, isn't it funny that Leonsis owns the Washington Wizards?

If I'm him, I want them both in the deal, but who knows if that's a different arm, and they leave that open, and eventually they sell it to the Raptors.

No idea. Yeah.

But I don't know. That's a very good question. I wonder what happens to it because it doesn't have the notoriety that Cap friendly has in the NHL space. It hasn't gained traction yet in the NBA space. So we'll see if it lives past the state.