NHL launches a front office iPad app to modernize roster, contract and salary cap info for teams

MANALAPAN, Fla. (AP) — The NHL has launched a front office app that modernizes the league’s roster, contract and salary cap information.

The league worked with SAP to develop an app for Apple iPads that streamlines Central Registry data, cap and long-term injury status and no-trade and no-move clauses and lays it all out for general managers and league executives to access at their fingertips for the first time. Announced Thursday, GMs have been trying it out since late December.

“Instead of traveling with a booklet of heavy — it looks like a magazine or a Bible, almost — having everything in one place on an iPad I think will just alleviate and make it easier and simpler to log on and check the status and sometimes your roster and how you can make transactions and stuff like that,” Philadelphia Flyers GM Daniel Briere told The Associated Press this week.

The development comes eight years since the NHL put iPads in coaches’ and players’ hands on benches during games. The hope is it will be used just as frequently to figure out trades, free agent signings and other moves.

“The on-bench coaching app that we built together, that is a part of the game every single day and it’s built in a robust way that it can be part of the game every single day,” NHL chief operating officer Stephen McArdle said. “We’ve sort of done groundbreaking work on the coaching side. We’ve done groundbreaking work on the fan side with a lot of the statistical data that was powered many years ago by SAP when we re-did that (NHL.com stats) site, and now this is sort of the third leg of the stool with roster information."

Longtime hockey executive Don Waddell, in his first season as GM of the Columbus Blue Jackets, said it's convenient to have “something to refer to quickly where you’re always asking those questions” about no-trade clauses and the like.

“And with any new app, it’s only going to continue to get better, so we’re excited about it,” Waddell said. “But I think the features that they’re offering right now is certainly something that we’re all going to be able to utilize.”

The initial release of the SAP-NHL Front Office App is made up of three sections:

— League view, which provides a high-level display of each team's current and projected offseason cap situation, alerts for daily transactions with custom filters and a player watch list and draft grid of future picks with details on how they changed hands and conditions on selections.

— Team view, which offers contract information for each player in the organization for the current season and the next eight.

— Player view, which includes biographical information, contract details and PDFs, game logs and transaction history.

McArdle said the idea was a result of the technology available combined with the needs expressed from organizations around the league. SAP VP of Global Sponsorships Dan Fleetwood pointed to the coaching app as the necessary first step to make this possible — and potentially speed up player movement around NHL.

“It’s that type of a foundation that you need to really kind of grow and do something,” Fleetwood said. “We hope that it does power more trades or give people the ability to manipulate their rosters better.”

In the aftermath of the Washington Capitals buying and shuttering the popular CapFriendly site to make that their proprietary in-house data, places like PuckPedia and CapWages have emerged to fill the void for fans who at one point used CapGeek to look up or reimagine rosters. This app is for teams and teams only and expected to eventually be available on iPhone, but there is no plan to offer a version for the general public.

“We’re currently focused on super-serving the clubs in the front office,” McArdle said. “There is so much information in this version that we think it is most appropriate for the front offices and for the clubs. Down the road, who knows, but right now it’s not our focus.”

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