With the Washington Capitals buying popular NHL salary website CapFriendly early in July, some NHL teams are being left high and dry when it comes to having an API and, generally, useful salary cap information. The Philadelphia Flyers are purportedly one of those teams.
NHL insider Elliotte Friedman shared on his “32 Thoughts” podcast on Tuesday that several division rivals of the Flyers are prepared for that CapFriendly changes, but the Flyers themselves were left off that list.
“One of the things people are talking about here is what a huge blow, a disaster in particular, this is going to be for some teams if they don’t have their own setup,” Friedman said. “I don’t think this is necessarily everybody, but here are the teams I know of that have something, where they can say ‘Ok, we’ve got a backup plan here for when this goes offline’: Seattle. . . New Jersey, Carolina, I heard Chicago, Islanders. . . Toronto. . . Columbus, and Pittsburgh.”
Friedman would again stress that those are the only teams he’s aware of that have a plan in place, but we can only assume the Flyers are not among them at this time. Given the fact that the Flyers’ front office just finished their first full season in charge, it is not exactly a surprise that they did not dedicate time and/or resources to having a plan for a situation like this one for CapFriendly.
And, to be clear, this is not to say that there aren’t other options, whether they be private or public. PuckPedia, the other dominant force in the public salary cap space, has already vowed further changes as part of ongoing site renovations.
They also have draft pick and cap space relief calculators that were designed with the help of former NHL executive Matt Perri, so there is plenty of legitimacy to that operation.
Where the Flyers truly stand in this matter will be revealed in a matter of weeks.
