Las Vegas Hockey Team Hires General Fanager Founder Tom Poraszka

Las Vegas Hockey Team Hires General Fanager Founder Tom Poraszka Hired as Hockey Operations Analyst, GeneralFanager.com Shutting Down (Who Will Scramble to Create the Next Expansion Tool?)

General Fanager Founder Tom Poraszka was hired by the Las Vegas hockey team on Monday. He was named hockey operations analyst after years of providing a helpful resource for not only fans, but NHL front offices as well.

In wake of the announcement, generalfanager.com has abruptly shut down, greeting visitors of the site with the following message:

"It is with sadness that we close the doors to this incredibly fun passion project. We launched General Fanager in May of 2015. Along the way, we have come to serve and get to know an incredible base of users that we will greatly miss.For anyone that ever helped with the site, from those that pitched in on busy days, to those that reported site errors, or helped track down details, or those that promoted our work, or just simply those that routinely typed generalfanager.com into their address bar: Thank you.– Tom PoraszkaFounder, General Fanager"

All NHL

This is great news for Tom, and we wish him the best in his future endeavor. It does mark somewhat of a sad day in the hockey world, though. GeneralFanager grew to become to go-to site for NHL contract information, draft pick info, and most recently, their expansion draft tool.

You can still get that necessary contract information from sites such as NHLNumbers.com, but fans will have to do a little more digging for draft pick info.

Perhaps worst of all is the loss of that fancy expansion draft tool. Mock drafts are still possible (and we plan to continue rolling them out on a monthly basis), just admittedly more difficult.

Opportunity Knocks?

Interest in next June’s expansion draft will only continue to grow as the season goes on. You’d have to expect that someone is already looking at this news as an opportunity. That person that can make the next expansion draft tool and perhaps even improve upon the original, will reap the benefits.

Next: 5 Bold Predictions for the Atlantic Division

NHL Has a Chance to Step Up

For years, the NHL has been reluctant to share contract information with fans. As a fan, wouldn’t you love to be able to log on to NHL.com and see a similar setup to what General Fanager offered with full contract info on every player? Why not include things such as specific details into performance bonuses?

These are the type of things fans are hungry for, and yet for some reason the NHL seems resistant. Strange considering how hard they’ve worked over the last year to grow their interactive experience for fans. If the league was smart, they’d take this golden opportunity to make themselves the number one source for everything fans are after, including a new expansion tool.