Below is a blog we’ll soon be posting to our new company blog; it outlines our company’s vision and values.  

The answer to the question ‘Why Shnarped?’ is the same as the answer to ‘Why Hockey Players for Kids?’  I love being a part of the hockey community.  There is something special about the sport that brings people together.  From the NHL all the way down to 5-year-old youth leagues , you can’t win in hockey without an entire community – including management, players, parents, and fans – moving in the same direction.  The sport breeds character and leadership.  Both Shnarped and Hockey Players for Kids were created to harness these traits, and to use them to strengthen and grow hockey communities around the world.

Shnarped itself started as a solution to a problem our charity – Hockey Players for Kids – was facing two years ago (and still faces today).  Pro hockey players move around so much it’s nearly impossible to keep a steady stream of communications going on any one medium.  Cell phone numbers change, email is rarely used, facebook has privacy concerns; basically each of our members requires a different mode of communication.

So I thought creating a social network for our 100+ members would be a great way to improve communications, and by opening the network up to all pro hockey players we would be able to better spread the word about our charity. Realizing the network would need a ‘hook’ to keep players checking back regularly, I thought creating a player tracker across leagues would be a great add-on to the social network.  Hockey players are always checking up on their buddies’ stats, and in the past that required jumping across tons of box scores on various websites.  With this in mind I started looking for feedback, and based on conversations with a number of people smarter than myself (including Shnarped cofounder Kyle Hagel and Nottingham Panther teammate Billy Ryan), decided that starting with the stat tracking feature was the logical first step to creating this network.

The concept for Shnarped came out of issues the founding team noticed as part of Hockey Players for Kids.

This decision started us down what became a two-year journey to get the first version of the Shnarped iPhone application launched.  Many of the details of the concept have changed, but the overall vision has remained relatively the same.

We at Shnarped truly believe in the values and people that embody the sport of hockey, and aim to build a platform that will let more people see what we see, with the goal of strengthening and growing hockey communities around the world.

Scott Reynolds, an HP4K volunteer, teaches kids in Cincinnati the tenets of the game of hockey.