I built a hockey trade and analytics site
Hey everyone. I’ve spent the past eight months building Cap & Crease, an independent hockey project that started as a trade machine and gradually became something much larger.
The original question was simple: beyond matching salaries, could I build something that evaluates whether a trade makes sense for both teams?
That led into estimating player value, accounting for contracts and retained salary, valuing draft picks, and trying to explain those evaluations in a way people can actually follow.
The site now includes player and team analytics, player profiles and archetypes, and experimental metrics built using publicly available data. It’s an early release, and the models still need validation and refinement.
I’m posting here because I’d like feedback from people who enjoy digging into hockey numbers, particularly on:
- Player evaluations: Where does an evaluation look questionable, and what might it be missing?
- Explanations: Can you understand what a metric measures and how to interpret it?
- Comparisons: Are there players or player types you’d use to test whether the model behaves sensibly?
If you have a few minutes, look up two players you know well and tell me whether the comparison makes sense and why. A specific example would give me something concrete to investigate.
You can try it at https://capandcrease.com. Feedback in this thread is welcome; I’ve also set up r/CapAndCrease for ongoing discussion, bug reports, and development updates. There is also a bug form submission found in the footer.
I’m the sole developer, so fixes may take some time, but I’ll be here to answer questions and discuss the results.