"Things happen for a reason" - unknown

    Back on May 13, I indicated that I was working on a rewrite of the entire NHLSCAP site.  My goal at that time was to completely revamp things here and introduce several items that no one else had.
    -- A "buyout calculator" that would show exactly what a buyout of any player would look like, depending on when it was executed.
    -- A "trade calculator" that showed whether two teams could make a trade, what the cap implications were, and if the trade couldn't be pulled off now when it could be pulled off.
    -- A "roster generator" that allowed users to build their own rosters given existing players.

    There were other things, but those were the major items.  I knew that if I put those in here, it would make NHLSCAP hands down the place to go to for salary and cap information.  After about 2 weeks of working through and getting things set up, someone pointed me to a new site that had some salary and cap information.  It was using data from the Globe and Mail - so  I thought, "well, it can't be that good."  However, when I looked at this new site I was stunned.  To my amazement and dismay, someone else had put together many of the things I had planned for NHLSCAP.

    And it was good.  Truth be told, it was really good.

    So I debated whether I should go ahead and keep working on NHLSCAP to put the things I had planned into place, and I quickly hit road blocks - some of my own doing [by nature, I'm not a programmer so I have to learn a lot of the sophisticated programming by trial and error] and some that were out of my hands.  I quickly realized that it was going to take a lot of work to make things happen here - and while I was committed to the site, I knew it was going to be a slower process than I had planned.

    And then June 24 came - and the news that my father had suffered a stroke.  Fortunately, it was a minor stroke - but still, it was a stroke.  Worse yet, it wasn't his first stroke - and he had no idea he had suffered a stroke previously.

    At that point, I re-evaluated things.  While my father is doing well and the outlook is good, I know that I need to do a lot of things to make sure he's taken care of, both now and in the future.  I also knew that I still had a couple of actuarial exams I need to pass [because no one has called and said, "gosh - you know your stuff ... would you like to come to work as a capologist for us?" and as much as I love doing this, it's not what pays the bills every month] and the time needed to get through those was going to increase over the next 12 months.  If there's one thing I hate doing, it's doing something half-assed, and if I made the decision to go forward with things here it was going to end up being a half-assed effort.

    So ... I made a critical decision.  I decided to turn over what I had to someone else and let them carry on what I've done so I can focus on things that are a lot more important right now.

    All of the salary and cap information I have has been given to Matthew Wuest, who runs www.capgeek.com.  If you haven't checked the site out, please do - Matt has done a fantastic job thus far, and over the next few months will be working hard to get his site to do everything I did and then some.  The tools he's built into CapGeek are a cap junkie's dream, and I'm confident that if you spend 3 minutes there, you'll agree that it blows away every other site that's attempted to show salary and cap information - including what I've had here.

    The CBA information I've got here will remain for the time being.  I still plan on eventually completing it [and had made good progress on that until recently], and many people still find it useful - so I'll leave it here for now.  If it moves elsewhere, I'll let you know where it's going well ahead of time.  The archived information will also remain here until Matt can take it over [if he chooses to].  Most of the other information will stay here but will be updated as time permits, including the list of no-trade clauses and other such items.

    For those of you getting the spreadsheet:  the version that went out on June 12 was in all likelihood the final one that I'll send.  I may still send a version out on a very limited basis, but most of you can pick up the information at CapGeek once Matt gets everything set up.  If you need a copy of it, let me know and I'll send it by request - but there won't be a regular mailing of it.

    Thanks to everyone who supported NHLSCAP and its predecessor at GeoCities.  Your support and your feedback were appreciated, and I am humbled by all of it.  In all honesty, this wasn't the message I expected to be posting on June 30 ... but I'm comfortable with it.  Whatever happens, I'm confident that I'll be fine - and I'm confident that CapGeek will become everything I wanted NHLSCAP to be and more ... which is something that was incredibly important to me when making the decision to send my data there.  It's not like I need to prove to anyone that I know what I'm doing or that I understand the salary cap - I think the last 3+ years has shown that I understand it as well as anyone.  I'm simply at a point where I've got other things I need to focus on that are more important.

    Who knows ... maybe I'll finally get that job as a capologist that people have said I should have.  Like someone once said ... things always happen for a reason.

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