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Art by @iRSPe, photo credit to Andy Hall on Unsplash. Guardians of The Crease is an interview series created by @jahajaha93. The series was inspired by earlier discussions between community members regarding goaltenders getting too little credit for their hard work. The goaltender position is very different to play compared to the other skater positions. Being a successful ECL goaltender requires patience and understanding of the game on a completely different level. This interview series is here to shed some light on the mystical goaltender position and simultaneously bring forth some of the great personalities competing in our league. Our first guest will be ECL 5 champion @ICappeI, who spent last season with SJK eSports. He is a rather new face in the community, but has quickly become one of the best goaltenders around. In only his 3rd ECL season, Cappe managed to make a successful cup run with Aapon Taikasauva. The team had a very solid goaltending tandem in Cappe and @swagx88, the two sharing the responsibility in the regular season, but Cappe taking control come the playoffs. A solid defensive display paired with Cappes stellar goaltending amounted to 6 playoff shutouts in 18 games, topped off with the Elite championship title. ECL 6 started well in net for SJK, with 5 W's in 6 games and a high save percentage. However, the team went on a bit of a cold streak towards the end, resulting in an 8th seed into the playoffs. SJK surely had the roster in place for a cup run in ECL 6, but consistency proved to be a problem. Cappe played yet another solid season in net, but his team suffered a disappointing first round exit against Dynasty. ICappeI enjoys flashy, sometimes unorthodox saves like the ones displayed by Dominik Hasek in his prime. Who? Name: Casper Lundgren Age: 24 Nationality: Swedish Previously represented teams: Free From Rodents, Nordic Lightning, Aapon Taikasauva and SJK eSports. Casper "ICappeI" Lundgren is a big fan of the Montreal Canadiens. "A cold Pepsi Max" -ICappeI on his pre-game routine. What caused you to play the goalie position in EASHL? I played EASHL with my friend @Phillelindberg only and he was a better forward than me so we decided that it was better for our club that i stayed in the net. After a couple of games we found out that it kind of sucked to only play two players and four bots so we tried to check with people in the swedish NHL group on Facebook. @AndreasNo who plays in Free From Rodents played with us and recruited me to play with their team in ECL. So basically I was too bad to play forward so I ended up in the net instead. How long have you been playing goalie for? I started playing EASHL in November 2016 and made my first appearance in ECL in Nov/Dec in ECL 3. How do you practice? Did you have someone showing you the ropes? I studied some goalies in the beginning (ECL 3 playoffs) For example: @SpiderRoyal and @FinKonna. What is your favourite part about playing goalie? To feel that you make a difference in the games when it matters the most. That you can win games for your team just because you are on your highest level. We all know goalies are a bit special. Do you have any special routines when playing? A cold Pepsi Max is the most important pre-game routine that I have. I also listen to music when i play important games, it helps me focus instead of hearing the players talk to each other. Pick two defenders you'd want playing in front of you. (Not your own) @nylanderi and @jtorro1233. Best defence I’ve ever played behind. But if I had to choose players that I haven’t played ECL with I’ll go with @Janzuh and @Snapster. I think that those two are so good in both ends of the ice. One guy you'd hate to face on a breakaway. @Norpee, no doubt. He’s one of the players I hate playing against, he’s so smart. Is there a real-life goalie you try to mimic? Dominik Hasek. I want to dominate in the net as he did. Any story behind your gear setup? No, not really. I want the pads to be white, black and have a little bit of the team colour on them. There isn't a special thought behind this setup, ICappeI likes keeping it simple with a touch of team colour on the pads. Hot seat Glove or blocker save? Glove. Breakaway or one-timer? Breakaway Favourite takeout food? Pizza, mamma Mia! Condiments on the side or on top of the dish? On the side. Most famous person you ever met? Good Q, i’ll stick to hockey and say Rasmus Dahlin. Best thing to do on a day off? Sleep. Favourite sport other than hockey? Football. In the spirit of the FIFA World Cup, who do you think will win? Argentina, Messi will be the top scorer. Thank you for your time Cappe and good luck with the upcoming Summer Cup! It's been nice to learn about the mindset of one of the greatest goaltenders in our scene. The series will continue, so stay tuned for some more stories from our Guardians Of The Crease. If you enjoyed this article and would like to see more similar content, please make sure to show it by liking and sharing. See you guys out on the ice!

Hey NHLGamers, we want to remind you that the deadline for the Summer Cup registration is only 1 day away (Wednesday, 6th June 2018 23:59:59 CEST). Over 370 players will already take part in this Summer tournament and we would be proud to break the mark of 400 participants. This tournament will increase your network within the community and especially newcomers are welcome to enjoy the possibilities which NHLGamer has to offer. We are doing a live-draft event on Saturday, starting at 16:00 CEST, where every team captain will complete their roster piece by piece by hopefully drafting a great bunch of players who will have a ton of fun together. If you missed our original Summer Cup 3 post, here is the structure of this upcoming event: SUMMER CUP 3 FRAMEWORK Team building: No more than 2 players from a single ECL 6 team are allowed to play on the same Summer Cup team. This rule applies to the final rosters, after transfers and free agents. Team names: The Summer Cup will be played in dedicated EASHL teams which will have "NG" as a prefix - for example "NG Golden Knights". Sign-ups: To rule out unfortunate circumstances when it comes to player positioning, holidays and other aspects, the sign-ups will follow a clear structure, allowing captains to recognize fitting players more easily. Draft procedure: The team captains will be taking part in a snake draft, where all of the signed up players will be drafted during one night. LEAGUE DETAILS Summer Cup Season 3 will take place on the PS4 version of NHL18. Last day to sign up is Wednesday 6th of June 2018. Players sign up using the registration tool linked at the bottom of the post. Due to the latency issues experienced by the North American players in Summer Cup 2, Summer Cup 3 is only for European players. All signed up players are aimed to be seeded into teams with a size of 10 players (may vary). Out of all registrations, NHLGamer Staff will select an according number of team captains from the players that offered to take on a captaincy role in their sign-up post - anyone is allowed to apply for it. Team captains will receive a draft sheet on Thursday 7th of June, containing all signed up players and relevant information in a structured form. Team captains will be taking part in a live draft event on Saturday 9th of June picking their roster until all players are seeded. The draft will be streamed live on our Twitch channel. All games are played 6vs6 using dedicated EASHL teams. The Summer Cup is set to start on the week of June 11th and aimed to be finished in July. Full rules will be released after registration is over. HOW TO PARTICIPATE To participate, make sure you are logged in or create an account first, visit the sign-up page and fill in all fields of the registration form like below - make sure the player positions in your Player Card are up-to-date so captains know who they are drafting! You can update your Player Card on the "Edit Player" page. Sign-up page: Click here! Be a part of this record breaking crowd and sign up for this years Summer Cup!

Hi there NHLGamers! You might have spotted some social media posts some weeks back about founder @Kenu being interviewed for a broadcast on Aito Hitti – A Finnish radio station, part of a network that according to their website has around 800 000 frequent listeners. Unfortunately, the interview was done only in Finnish and we felt that we shouldn’t exclude our international audience from learning what our founder had to say. Therefore, in this article I’ll briefly be recapping some of the main points discussed in the almost 20 minute segment about NHLGamer. The interview focused on some basic things about NHLGamer, such as the conception of the community and the idea behind it and the ECL. Besides that, also some of the hottest topics in the community were discussed - such as money tournaments in the scene and the evolution of these. Some of our community members have been with NHLGamer all the way since late 2015 when the site was released to the public. However, the idea was conceived already in 2009, when EA Sports discontinued their NHL-series for PC. Kenu had been creating popular mods (SM-liiga Pack, later FHR) for the PC version of the NHL-series for around 10 years together with a small group of people. When the possibility to create such mods was suddenly missing, there was a need to start doing something else. After creating the Finnish Cup's and taking a brief stint at the EHL-series at ConsoleHockey, Kenu and @Lurkins decided to combine forces in creating what we now know as NHLGamer.com. This domain wasn't always theirs, though - a guy called Petri Wathén, PW, had a platform for organising NHL tournaments at the start of the century, but as his interest faded, some of the remaining staff decided to acquire the domain. In recent years, NHL gaming has come a long way and as mentioned above, one of the topics discussed was the introduction of money tournaments into the NHL gaming scene. A good example of this is the NHL Gaming World Championship, which was introduced this spring. The qualifiers for this tournament are currently in progress, with community members @Hansulinho and @FlyerKungen already advancing to the regional qualifiers in Stockholm, Sweden. (After the interview took place, also @Erkki, @plee999, @Kane and @Nieppii have secured their spots in Stockholm. That's 6/6 for our community. Keep it up!) Currently, the EASHL community hasn't seen major money tournaments, but rest assured - they will be coming right here on NHLGamer. For those of you that are able to understand the interview without a translation, you'll find the interview above. The current ECL season was also discussed. Kenu mentions the increase in teams within the last few seasons and the fact that games are tighter than ever. All of the divisions hold very talented teams and the divisions framework introduced in ECL 4 has worked very well in assigning teams to appropriate skill levels - creating tighter matchups and more interesting and exciting seasons. It's been great to see the growth of our community with new members joining every day. It's also been great to witness how people are coming together and building lasting friendships. A beautiful sense of belonging was present at the recent IS Cup (November 2017), where we saw some tough competition but also how close our community members actually are. An interesting question briefly discussed was wether the Finnish Liiga has shown any interest in NHLGamer. At this stage there have been no talks, says Kenu, but it's absolutely not out of the question. Professional ice hockey teams such as Ässät, HIFK and Pelicans - to name a few - are active in the gaming scene. No teams are currently represented in virtual ice hockey, but as money is starting to be discussed in the scene, interest might spark. The consensus at the end of the interview was that the future for NHLGamer and virtual ice hockey is bright. As sponsors and organisations are getting the smell of money, it will create more interest. It's now up to us to show what we as a community can do in order to make this bright future happen.