Up to Dater: CapGeek's Legacy Lives on After Founder's Passing

Matthew Wuest was a hero to math-challenged sports writers, which means he was a hero to about 99.8 percent of the profession. When he started a website called CapGeek.com in 2009, hockey reporters could hardly believe it was true. You mean, all you have to do is click on this website and scroll to your team, and the salaries of players will all be perfectly arranged as to their implications to the overall team cap? 

It was like the scene in the filmed version of Grapes of Wrath for print reporters who couldn't add: When the Joad family stumbles upon a FEMA-style government camp where they, you know, had running water and food at a reasonable price and...dances...on Saturday nights, Tom Joad tells the camp manager, "Ma, she ain't been treated this good in...a long while."

Wuest, a former reporter with Metro Halifax, died of colon cancer on March 19 of this year, at age 35. He disbanded CapGeek.com shortly before his death, and the site lives on only in archived form. For several weeks, there was no place to go for hockey people to explore the increasingly relevant world of salary-cap information. 

Enter Tom Poraszka, who wants to carry on the legacy of Wuest with his site GeneralFanager.com. Since May, Poraszka's site has become a leading go-to source of information of the kind that CapGeek provided. It has every team's payroll broken down player by player, along with future season contract implications for each team. 

Poraszka, a tech engineer from the Toronto area, was just one of the many frustrated, diehard hockey fans who thirsted for the information Wuest provided. What better way to get it than to do the same thing he did?

Tom Poraszka

"When CapGeek went down, there was just such a void of information," Poraszka told Bleacher Report. "Anytime you have an argument about a player's worth, the cap information becomes so vital. I didn't think my site would take off, because I thought the NHL or the NHLPA would take over and was surprised when they didn't."

Actually, the NHLPA website lists every player's salary. But it is only for the current season, and there is no team-wide list. The NHL's website does not list any salary information. 

Poraszka said he never met Wuest, but he did correspond with him on Twitter, always complimenting him on his work. 

"I haven't talked with his family, but I just want them to know that he was a big influence on me and many others, and whatever I do with my own site, it's because of what he started," Poraszka said. 

Poraszka, who says he is averaging more than 10,000 unique visitors a day and expects that to increase more as the hockey season starts, hopes to add more interactive features to his site and wants to better educate his visitors about the collective bargaining agreement. It's much more complicated than the average fans thinks, he said, pointing out a couple of offseason trades.

"When Chris Pronger was traded by Philadelphia to Phoenix for cap reasons, a lot of people got it wrong. And when Sam Gagner went to Philly as part of the deal, a lot of people didn't realize he went to Tampa Bay first, and they picked up part of his salary, so the cap numbers a lot of people reported at first were wrong," Poraszka said. "We were able to verify the correct numbers."

Poraszka said he has made professional contacts with many agents, general managers and NHL beat writers since launching his site. That is crucial, he said, in getting ready information that is correct.

"So many of those people have reached out to me. They want a site that is accurate and dependable. Most of them don't have the time to compute it all into a large database," Poraszka said.

How many hours is Poraszka putting into Generalfanager.com, apart from his day job?

"Probably 40 hours a week," he said. "I probably will put some ads on the site to try and make ends meet. Otherwise, this is a labor of love."

But what if an NHL team came calling to put his analytics services to use? 

"I'd definitely consider it," he said.

Vegas, Quebec City closer for inclusion

Las Vegas and Quebec City, the only two cities to pass initial muster for consideration as NHL expansion franchises, advanced to "Phase 3" of the process recently, according to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, via Yahoo Sports.

Unless something seriously goes off the rails, those two cities will have NHL teams for the 2016-17 seasons. "Black Aces" remains the leading contender as a team nickname for the Vegas squad, and there seems popular sentiment to call the new Quebec team the Nordiques again. The NHL owns the rights to the Nordiques nickname, but there is no reason to believe the league won't give the name back to the new team, just like the Cleveland Browns of the NFL got their old name back.

KHL crackdown?

We still don't know what will be decided, but it figures to be a mess. New Kontinental Hockey League executive Slava Fetisov, the first Russian player to emigrate to the NHL under the old Soviet system, to New Jersey in 1989-90, now wants to keep the best Russian players from jumping overseas.

Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images

This summer, Fetisov told Russia's R-Sport (via the Associated Press, h/t Adam Gretz of CBSSports.com) he wanted a "federal law" to keep the best Russian players from being able to jump to the NHL until they are 28. It is just bad optics on Fetisov's part to say something like this, since he was the first to jump to the NHL after years of repression in the old Soviet system.

Fetisov should know better. The optics don't look good. He was the first to benefit from a chance in old Soviet policy. Now, he wants to keep the best Russian players locked up until 28? Only for his league's selfish benefit. 

Sorry, that's not how capitalism works.

Scotty's Corner

M. Spencer Green/Associated Press

In our weekly visit with 14-time Stanley Cup winner Scotty Bowman, we asked the 81-year-old living legend: "We've all been on some bumpy flights in our time, but was there ever a team flight you thought you were going to die because of some circumstance?"

Yes, Bowman recalls. It was on a 1972 flight with the Montreal Canadiens. 

"We were flying on a DC 3, and the door at the rear of the plane sprung open," Bowman said. "Guy Lafleur and Guy Lapointe were startled and started screaming."

Everyone, Bowman included, thought they were marked for death amid the bumping turbulence and open rear door which was sucking air out.

"But the pilots brought the plane down safely," Bowman said. "But, wow. We were all uptight."

Adrian Dater covers the NHL for Bleacher Report.