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Hello NHLGamers, Going to keep it short and sweet for now by presenting the ECL 3 Playoff Pairings for Round 1. A playoff tree will be up tomorrow to provide you all with a visual guide for how the playoffs are progressing. Also, @Kenu will have further details for you regarding how the final weeks of the regular season shook out in a post tomorrow (including information on cases and rulings) but for now the staff would like to thank all the participants of this enormous tournament for giving it your all. Words were said, frustrations vented but above all - great hockey was played. That final ingredient is only going to get better in the coming weeks so without further ado, here are the teams battling for the ECL 3 Trophy: (Group 1 teams left, Group 2 teams right) Northern Stars - Free From Rodents Written In The Stars - Nordic Nosebleed X Factor - Kattiautomatti Finnish Roosters - Alliance HT Nordic Blizzard - murohoki Dynasty - Knight Aces HC Refuse To Lose - TIKI TALK Fat Cats - Inter Iceland White Trash - Northern Ascendancy Warriors of Kongo - Nordic Nightmare HC Checkmate - MUKIMIEHET sjukstugan - Nordic Lightning Rynnäkköviikset - SIKA Silver Sword Griffins - Synergy Hockey Falun Coal Miners - Aapon Taikasauva No Guts No Glory - Laser HT Be sure to tune in tomorrow for more great (hopefully not mediocre) stuff when me and @vSilenttio will be predicting the playoffs in a Playoff Preview post. Lots of great action to look forward to in other words, even besides the games. Good luck in the playoffs. // NHLGamer Staff

Hey NHL Gamers, The playoffs are here! It’s time to look at our last batch of rulings during the end of the regular season. Again, we do apologise for taking more than a week to process some of the decisions. As mentioned previously, we aim to streamline this process to be more efficient in the future. In fact, we are looking for more staff members that are able to contribute to our website. If you feel you have what it takes to bring some value to our website – feel free to send me a PM and tell me what you bring to the table. This installment of NHL Gamer Staff rulings covers the following topics: Walkover requests a. HC Checkmate – Silver Sword Griffins b. Fat Cats – Silver Sword Griffins c. No Guts No Glory – Nordic Blizzard d. AK47 – Nordic Nosebleeds e. Nordic Nosebleeds – Bare Knuckles Hockey f. No Guts No Glory – La Suède g. Northern Ascendancy – Terrific Tigers h. Nordic Blizzard – HC Soittorasia The case of the glitched player: Silver Sword Griffins – Finnish Roosters Missing game stats 1. Walkover requests Boy, oh boy did we have a lot of walkover requests. I will mention that the below cases have been simplified for the reading (and writing) pleasure and may give more of a black and white picture of the case than the reality of things. 1a. Northern Ascendancy – Terrific Tigers Terrific Tigers weren’t responding to communication from Northern Ascendancy and even staff thought the Terrific Tigers had left the league, until we got a response at the last minute. Northern Ascendancy was awarded the walkover wins. 1b. Nordic Blizzard – HC Soittorasia The teams were communicating actively in order to get the games going, but as HC Soittorasia failed to get their full 6 on ice despite several attempts, they eventually decided to hand out the walkovers to Nordic Blizzard. 1c. No Guts No Glory – Nordic Blizzard No Guts No Glory asked about the possibility to get walk over wins due to issues with agreeing on a functional date to play vs Nordic Blizzard. Both teams were communicating actively, but what worked for the other, didn’t work for the other team. The NHLGamer staff didn’t see a reason to award either team with WO’s, as both have been active and Nordic Blizzard had been available to play on the default date. Instead, we gave the teams an extra day to play the games. Sadly, No Guts No Glory was unable to play on that day and decided to give walkover wins to Nordic Blizzard. 1d. AK47 – Nordic Nosebleeds A member of Nordic Nosebleeds was having problems with his internet connection during the last day of regular season and despite several attempts they weren’t able to get the full 6 men on ice. Nordic Nosebleeds suggested playing with 5 against AK47’s 6, but AK47 refused, as it is against the rules. Nordic Nosebleeds handed AK47 the walkover wins. 1e. Nordic Nosebleeds – Bare Knuckles Hockey This one is pretty much a carbon copy for what we have ruled on before. Neither team had communicated with each other before the default game date and time and 9 minutes before the default game time Nordic Nosebleeds approached Bare Knuckles Hockey asking if they are ready to play. See "On the matter of the games that were scheduled between Rusty Blades and Refuse To Lose (October 27th)" in Staff Rulings, Part 2 for the previous ruling: While we do agree that Bare Knuckles Hockey didn’t do their part, we want to remind everyone, that we will not accept walk over requests of game times that are simply based on assumption. That is not to say that the schedule isn’t to be honored, but if you plan to play on the scheduled day and time, please let your opponent know. If not, also let them know. After their mistake, Bare Knuckles Hockey asked Nordic Nosebleeds to play on another day, but according to BKH, they were told they can’t play for two weeks. Due to these circumstances, we allowed the teams the extra day to battle it off on the ice. Nordic Nosebleeds immediately refused this decision, so we had no other option than to give the walkover wins to Bare Knuckles Hockey. 1f. No Guts No Glory – La Suède We were told that La Suède can’t play and they will give the walk overs to No Guts No Glory. We approached La Suède to confirm and made sure both teams understood a) what an important matchup this is for the overall standings and b) that we can allow them one extra day to finish this matchup. La Suède informed us that they can’t play, so we had no other option but to honor the walkover requests. 1g. HC Checkmate – Silver Sword Griffins These two teams had been trying to find a matching game time for quite a while (with HC Checkmate being more available) and they finally did. Sadly, about an hour before the first match was supposed to take place, the Silver Sword Griffins informed HC Checkmate that one of their players had been banned from PSN and that they are looking for a solution. Despite their best efforts, and after confirming that this was a console ban and not a profile ban, SSG was unable to get 6 men on the ice. Both teams were actively communicating in this case and SSG was trying their best to offer alternative game times for the match, but they did not work for HC Checkmate. Also, the fact that HC Checkmate had cancelled job shifts and important hobbies to be available for this game time made the cancellation extra hard for them. As both teams were active and the cancellation of the games last minute was unintentional, we wanted to offer the teams the possibility to play on the extra day. Sadly, HC Checkmate couldn’t make it at such short notice. The staff, however, had to rule in HC Checkmates favour in this case, as they had been the more available team and were not responsible for the original games not being played, so the walkover wins were given to HC Checkmate. 1h. Fat Cats – Silver Sword Griffins The games between Fat Cats and Silver Sword Griffins were to take place after the above game. These games were cancelled due to the same circumstances as that game. This game was even more late due to problems agreeing on scheduling and Fat Cats had been the more available party. As with the above case, we tried giving the teams the option of settling the games on the ice, but Fat Cats were unable to make it on such short notice. Again, as in the above case, Fat Cats had been the more active and available team, so we awarded them with the walkover wins. 2. The case of the glitched player: Silver Sword Griffins – Finnish Roosters This case has been discussed widely throughout the community in the last few days and as far as we know, the teams have put this behind them, so please feel free to comment your opinion on the matter itself, but let's not attack either team over it. As this case is quite extensive and @ProMinx24 from Silver Sword Grinnis wrote his thoughts about the case in quite a well formulated manner (including also one of the Finnish Roosters in the PM thread), I have decided to embed his view of the case, the opponents reply and our verdict. Please note that the quotes are released as both teams were ok with this being public. PM's in general are treated as personal communication and are not shared under normal circumstances. Let's start off with the quote from SSG: The reply from FR: There was some irrelevant posts in-between, and below you have the staff verdict: In the end, Finnish Roosters wanted to continue the game from the 3-2 FR lead and chose not to follow our recommendation. As far as I understood, after some debate, the teams agreed to play the entire 1st period (as the 3rd period) starting from the 3-2 lead. No further goals were scored and FR won the game. As you can see in the quote, the staff is planning to introduce some changes to the rules. The question of course is, where do you draw the line - where should we step in and where not? There's a good discussion going on at the moment about how community users think these sort of issues should be handled: It's a very good topic to discuss and we hope to hear as many of our members voicing their opinions about the topic. 3. Missing game stats There are quite an amount of games still missing stats. In some cases, it is the staff’s fault for not fixing issues that have been reported. But in cases where it hasn’t been reported and a game is missing stats, please fix it immediately. If you need assistance, please let the staff know. Failure to comply with adding stats for every game may (after warning) lead to team diqualification. We thank all the teams for their efforts in making the long regular season successful and wish the playoff teams good luck! On behalf of the NHL Gamer staff,