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ECL Elite 16 in 16 is a season preview series we're implementing ahead of ECL 7. The idea was conceived by @chavelski, but due to time constraining the man himself, the project is now being carried out by the rest of our Elite writing team. The series will be released in 16 parts, one article for each team. The teams have been ranked by all team captains, and articles are being released in order from predicted last place finish to predicted champion of ECL 7. The objective of this series is to give an idea to the community of who is representing which team, added by a small insight into the team with an interview of the team captain. Today we're taking a look at a team that has the skill, has the grit and has the vision to take it all home, they just haven't had the luck so far. The team that's next in line has found the way to stay at the top and be continuously successful, but despite that they haven't managed to win anything yet. You could say they've built a Dynasty around core players like@jumalpeku, @Snapster, @Tehh and @Sandr0hh. Might have given it away already, but yeah.. we'll be checking out Dynasty. Personally, I've been in the scene for a far shorter time than many of you other guys around, but I've always found Dynasty to be an annoyingly good opponent. Be it unorthodox breakout plays by @DieCutterMC or seeing the game ten steps ahead of the opposition like the tactician Ahola - they've always been one of the toughest teams to beat. They're not only really skilled players, but also seem like a great group of guys. I managed to get a hold of captain jumalpeku for an interview, which you can read at the end of this article. IN MukiMaisteri <-- Northern Ascendancy OriginalPumaz <-- SJK eSports Leksa94 <-- SJK eSports OUT Lukkolinho --> Break from NHL Puantso --> Symphony Current Roster: Forwards jumalpeku (C) @jumalpeku MukiMaisteri @hpkfani Filariou @Filariou Leksa94 @Leksa94 TehhAhola @Tehh Defensemen DieCutterMC @DieCutterMC Snapu48 (A) @Snapster JParola @Jorma Parola Goaltenders Sandr0hhh (A) @Sandr0hh OriginalPumaz @Hiiruh Dynasty has been a difficult opponent based on some occasional games played against you guys on the offseason. How did the guys spend the summer and what kind of reception has the new game had among the Dynasty boys? Your mind must be playing tricks on you! I'd say we're possibly the worst offseason team in all of Elite. I don't think we've had a single night where we've won two or more games in a row. Most of our guys pretty much took the summer off from NHLGaming. Other teams might have kept practicing hard all summer, our guys were out chasing tail and gassing beers. The new game has taken some getting used to. Feels like we've had to adjust our game a bit after every update as things we used to do didn't work all of a sudden. I think it's quite well known that we like to spend time in the penalty box and ath least that hasn't changed for the better with the new game. However, I think we all agree that NHL19 is a better version than the previous iteration. You guys acquired notorious goal-scorer MukiMaisteri early on, did you guys make any other moves during the summer? Our youngster @Buantso made a deal with @indi969 at his confirmation camp last summer, so we decided to honor their contract and ended up letting Puantso go. MukiMaisteri was acquired to fill the gap left by Puantso and I believe we hit the jackpot on this one. Luukkonen is probably the best goal scorer in the game, he's also a very competitive and vocal teammate. Exactly what we needed. Other acquisitions we made were @Leksa94 and OriginalPumaz @Hiiruh. Leksa is an excellent all-rounder in the offensive end of the ice, he will certainly see some ECL time if he can hop off Fortnite every once in a while. @Lukkoukko(Lukkolinho) decided to take a step back so we needed another goaltender. That's where OriginalPumaz stepped in and we're happy to have such an experienced and trustworthy guy behind our defenders. I think we still have the best goalie tandem in the league. How do you guys feel about the ECL Elite license? Of course we're happy about it. To start off, we were wondering if we're going to be active enough for it to pay off for us. However, I think this might have been the incentive needed for us to start taking it more seriously and get excited again. The license fee isn't bad and the return is decent, I'd surely like to have that in my wallet. We're moving in the right direction and props to @Kenu & the rest of the staff for that. Several sources have mentioned ECL Elite being tougher than ever this season. Which teams have been your toughest opponents and who do you think has potential for a surprise? SIKA is probably the only team we haven't managed to win in the preseason so I'd call them our toughest opponent. It's no joke, the SIKA roster right now seems so much better than before. I think they could also provide one of the potential upsets this season. Finally, are there any players in the league you would like to highlight for the upcoming season? Not on our team, that's for sure. I'd say keep your eyes on @vSilenttio. Thanks jumalpeku! Good luck for Dynasty with the upcoming season. ECL Elite 16 in 16 so far: 1. _______________ 2. _______________ 3. _______________ 4. _______________ 5. Dynasty 6. Northern Ascendancy 7. Sjukstugan 8. Northern Stars 9. Unlucky Boys 10. Rusty Blades 11. Almost Famous 12. _____________ (To be released) 13. SIKA 14. Gotham Knights 15. Falun Coal Miners 16. Team Frosty The options are running out! Who do you think is number four?

ECL Elite 16 in 16 is a season preview series we're implementing ahead of ECL 7. The idea was conceived by @chavelski, but due to time constraining the man himself, the project is now being carried out by the rest of our Elite writing team. The series will be released in 16 parts, one article for each team. The teams have been ranked by all team captains, and articles are being released in order from predicted last place finish to predicted champion of ECL 7. The objective of this series is to give an idea to the community of who is representing which team, added by a small insight into the team with an interview of the team captain. Salute, gamers! Riddle me this: I am partly Scandinavian, Nordic and Western European while not actually being any of them entirely. I'm old but young, well respected but not the most liked one, very successful but still slightly underrated. What I am? The lads in Northern Ascendancy got to stamp another finale performance on their resume as they fought their way to the ECL 6 finals last spring. After a strong regular season (19-5-6) NOR showed why they've been at the top for so many seasons now. On the first round of the playoffs they faced the hungry Elite debutants in Unlucky Boys. UB led the series a few times as they won the first two games, and after couple more games they were so close beating NOR as UB had the matchball in Game 6. However, "Because it's the Cup" - MukiMaisteri scored the game winning goal 38 seconds before overtime and the game ended 1-0 for NOR. He didn't stop there as the veteran winger scored four goals in Game 7 and NOR went ahead to the second round to face the big bad regular season champions, Written in the Stars. Four one goal games, three overtimes, 37,5 minutes time on attack for the losing side and 25,5 minutes for the winning team. NOR surprised most of the community by beating "Written" 4-1 in games. There's some Ascendance for you. In the ECL 6 finals NOR faced Carlsberg HC and couldn't repeat their trick, as CAR dominated the finals with a game result of 4-1. We saw three tight one goal games and only 14 goals combined in the whole series so hats off for both teams - it wasn't walk in the park to win the championship even though the numbers might tell a different story. IN s_a_k_i_s95 <-- Break from NHL OUT MukiMaisteri --> Dynasty Current roster: Forwards Anrh17 @anrh17 MartindalexC (C) @MartindalexC Foppatofflan (A) @Foppatofflan s_a_k_i_s95 @jeppiz18 x27ScottieN27x @ScottieN27 Defensemen eyebiz @eyebiz Haldeem @Haldeem Goaltenders Poliskontroll @poliskontroll The one and only British captain of our NHL gaming scene continues in his role as he leads his ship towards the ECL Elite finals once again. What does the Englishman @MartindalexC think about his team & their future? With another season and long a playoff run behind - how does life and the new game taste for Northern Ascendancy? To me it looks like you guys have continued with your usual strategy - being annoyingly good in two way hockey. Hmm, where should I start? I suppose the game is probably a good one to tackle first. Especially since, well, truth be told we think the game is pretty much complete and utter garbage, although that hasn’t exactly been a secret of ours. Just the way that games can easily be decided on random drops that evade a bunch of people really rubs us the wrong way. Regarding strategy though we’re still rolling with old faithful so to speak, although compared to years past we are seeing more time on attack which is something we’re not exactly accustomed to shall we say? So, we’ll just have to see how that dynamic plays out. As a veteran member of our NHL gaming scene, how do you see "the new era" after playing tons of games in the old gen era? Licenses are being paid, new teams and players are becoming more familiar to the scene - you know, lots of stuff has changed and evolved - what do you think about all this? Honestly, I’m mostly ambivalent to it all. I suppose the idea of making money off of playing this game is exceptionally enticing to some people but for the most part I play this game because I like it, despite all of its faults, plus lord knows I’ve got nothing else to do :joy:. In addition to this, you could say I have a pretty pessimistic view of this game ever becoming an ‘esport’ (see here for evidence #204505317: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVRZxEhBJFg) and that kind of feeds into my ambivalence, or even vice versa. Nevertheless, I’ll do my best to support Kenu and the site as best I can but I’m not gonna push the boat out so to speak. By the way, where did Martindale's career start from? It's been a joyfyl ride for sure! I'm a little fuzzy on the precise date but I think it was the very start of NHL 13 when NOR was 'founded' officially under that banner. Before that me, Poliskontroll, Juizki and Tacklecontrol played mostly 4s in NHL 12 under a different team name, and prior to that it was just me and Polis in NHL 11 under, yet again, a different name. In terms of tournaments I've played in 8 across both NHLGamer and Consolehockey under NOR, with 1 season where the team was named Unknown (but the franchise underneath remained the same I guess). What kind of checklist did you set for this summer? Is there any new fresh blood in NOR, or was there any lazy employees so to speak to get rid of in order to make your team an even scarier cup contender for ECL7? Is it corny to say that we wanted to get better (who doesn’t after all)? As for acquisitions, the team is practically the same except for -Mukimaisteri, although hopefully there’s a decent chance we’ll be adding someone to the roster, perhaps before this article even comes out. Regarding making the team an “even scarier cup contender” I believe that self-reflection is more important than blind faith, and I personally feel that we went to the finals last year because a couple key players amped up their game at critical times, for instance Poliskontroll really exhibited how good of a goalie he is when we played Written and Carlsberg, meanwhile Eyebiz played nigh on flawlessly when he came in mid-way through the Unlucky Boys series. Having players that can elevate their game is perhaps a consistent element that all winning teams have in their repertoire, however getting hot at the right time does not mean you can replicate it without fail, so we’ve been trying to get back to our basics and strengthen them, so that we don’t have to rely on players getting ‘hot’ to win. What Elite teams have been the most fun to face so far - and the word "fun" here can mean anything between easy to hard - you decide! I suppose Dynasty have been involved in some of the more entertaining games that we’ve played but apart from that I’m not sure. Our games against Written have been a tad underwhelming but it’s ‘fun’ playing a team with an abundance of skill since you know you’ll truly be tested, I know for instance that Flyerkungen has completely decimated me in faceoffs every time I’ve gone against him. I'd like to ask the same question that NOS was asked in their 16 in 16 - How much do you guys have left in the tank? For example, one of the best players of all time, Foppatofflan, is surely not getting any younger! I think, like most things, it’s a matter of perception and how you approach things. It’s easy to dismiss others skill as luck, or their emergence as your downfall. Me personally? I feel I can be better and perhaps that I should be since if we (NOR) want to win we’ll need a full team playing well, as I don’t think it’s possible nowadays for a player to ‘hard carry’ a team like you could on old gen. Besides, at the end of the day it’s not like I’m 50 years old, I’m maybe not going to pick things up as quickly or as easily as I could 7 years ago but as far as I’m concerned it should barely be a discernible difference since your brain doesn’t just start degrading once you’re past 20, 30, or even 40 years of age. In summary though, if we keep putting in hours each and every game and learn from any mistakes, then I feel (barring anything major) that there’s no real reason to expect a rapid decrease in skill. Huge thanks for your extensive answers, MartindalexC! See you on the ice and good luck on another long playoff push to NOR! ECL Elite 16 in 16 so far: 1. _______________ 2. _______________ 3. _______________ 4. _______________ 5. _______________ 6. Northern Ascendancy 7. Sjukstugan 8. Northern Stars 9. Unlucky Boys 10. Rusty Blades 11. Almost Famous 12. _____________ (To be released) 13. SIKA 14. Gotham Knights 15. Falun Coal Miners 16. Team Frosty We've got only five teams left to pick from for the next article.. Who would you think is going to finish 5th?

Hey NHLGamers, A new NHL 19 Tuner carrying the version number 1.0.2 has been released. Before we jump into the tuner notes, let's have a little talk. If you are active on social media and the NHL community, you know that there has been a lot of harsh feedback about NHL 19 and there's been claims such as: They ruined the game - it was already perfect during the beta! The patch/tuner turned the game back into NHL 18! The skating was perfect, but now I feel like a tank again! Let's take a moment to think about this. Could some of this backlash also be a community overreaction? I mean, we're having the same discussions annually. People that are familiar with marketing surely know that word of mouth works in a snowball effect, maybe that's a part of what's happening here? Understandably everyone can't like the changes but have they actually been as dramatic as the community has made it seem? I myself usually love playing the game in the first weeks it comes out - sure, it feels the same in many ways, but it's still fresh and people don't know how to play exactly and how to score in the most efficient ways. Fast-forward a few weeks: The game isn't as easy as it was on the week of the release. Your competition has also got in some game hours and has learned a trick or two. The bliss of having a new, amazing product has faded and you've become familiarized with the grind it takes to stay at a competitive level in the game. So a new patch or tuner comes out and someone tells you "this and that is completely ruined". You start focusing on it more. You notice new things that perhaps aren't actually new things, just things you didn't pay attention to before. But surely it's real - everybody is talking about it! Do I think the game is perfect? Far from it. I have spent countless hours giving constructive feedback about it this year alone. But constructive is the key word. If you want something to be actually improved, you can't expect it to improve if your feedback is at the level of "This is trash! Fix your game!". I know there are many members in our community that actually put in the time and effort to provide valuable and well constructed feedback. I believe we could all benefit from taking a look at our approach to feedback, whether it is at a Burger King or a web forum. Honestly, I have been too busy with working on the website and broadcasts to get in as many game hours as I would like to and because of that, I know that many of you are better qualified to actually discuss the pokechecks, stick lifts and skating. So please do discuss it in the comments, using words, videos and graphs or whatever you need. Let's just drill into the specifics of the issues and look at why things work or don't work the way we expect them to. It's also worth keeping in mind that if you release a patch that aims to fix everything in one go, it's could to be really hard to say what change caused an unexpected change to the game balance. NHL 19 Tuner 1.0.2 - Change log Ok, so on to the important stuff of what's new in this tuner. The tuner is now available, but I haven't had a chance to test it out yet. There are several parts that at least on paper sound like they issue many of my main complaints so far: You should not be able to smash that stick lift irresponsibly without getting called for penatlies. It should be easier to pull off some dekes with any player type now (I've felt it's too hard to get successful dekes even when the player isn't pressured) It's felt like it's been a bit too easy to knock the puck lose just by the opponent trying to hit you, but in the process their stick has touched the puck, often through your body. This should be improved now. I've often been confused with whether or not I've been able to pick up the puck or not and I don't know if I should leave the situation or not. Hopefully now the outcome will be more obvious and make reading the game a bit easier. Earlier broken sticks were removed (from competitive play) and now the dropped sticks. While I liked it as a thing that happens in real hockey, let's face it - it was very random and thus unfair. I've actually been quite happy with the goalies this year, but I imagine these tweaks are to hinder some glitch. What do you think about the new tuner? What is your main gripe with NHL 19? Let us know in the comments.

ECL Elite 16 in 16 is a season preview series we're implementing ahead of ECL 7. The idea was conceived by @chavelski, but due to time constraining the man himself, the project is now being carried out by the rest of our Elite writing team. The series will be released in 16 parts, one article for each team. The teams have been ranked by all team captains, and articles are being released in order from predicted last place finish to predicted champion of ECL 7. The objective of this series is to give an idea to the community of who is representing which team, added by a small insight into the team with an interview of the team captain. Sjukstugan, Carlsberg (now Radical), Kattiautomaatti, Silver Sword Griffins, Unlucky Boys, Evolution, Falun Coal Miners, Pata Hellalla, Monarchs, Filadelphia, Almost Famous, White Trash (now Team Frosty), Rusty Blades, Nordic Stars, & Gotham Knights. What do all of these teams have in common? The more astute of those reading will undoubtedly already know, but for those not always keeping up to date with the to-and-fros of Elite, the list details each and every team that has been promoted to the highest division over the past three seasons. Of said teams only five have remained in Elite after their initial inclusion, four have made the playoffs at least once, and only one has progressed past the first round and won the division title. What this shows is the true difference in skill between Pro and Elite, and that getting promoted does not mean that you can rest on your laurels or that your job as a captain or as a team is done, as in order to stay up and be competitive every game you need to constantly improve and identify areas that need practice. Sjukstugan is a team that perfectly embodies this concept due to their consistent results. As such, to hopefully key us in on how Sjukstugan are approaching their third season in Elite we would like to introduce 112s captain @Bjono who has answered some questions for us at the end of this article, enjoy! IN I-Maise-I <-- Break from NHL Tacterz <-- Monarchs Edhoolm97 <-- Monarchs PajenC32 <-- Monarchs juniorzalaz <-- Monarchs IFKPEKING2k15 <-- Monarchs OUT Patovic_ --> Stories will be told, banners will be raised - a legend retires JaikenK --> N/A Nampa77 --> Almost Famous Current Roster: Forwards IbjonoI @Bjono PajenC32 @pajenc Tacterz @Tacterz juniorzalaz @Zalaz Edhoolm97 @Edhoolm97 Norpee @Norpee Defensemen Klingen45 @Klingen45 Gustafsson7 @Gustafsson7 I-Maise-I Goaltenders I-Pippo-I @Pippo IFKPEKING2k15 @IsakTuvesson Hullued @Hullued Since joining Elite two seasons ago Sjukstugan has been on a slow, but nevertheless upward trend, moving up from 11th in ECL 5 to a very respectable 6th place finish in ECL 6. Do you feel like your team can reach loftier heights for the upcoming ECL 7 and if so, how have you gone about trying to achieve it? We can absolutely do it better but we need to be patience and give this new game some time. And also give time to play all New players in to the team. But the team is more motivated than we have been for a long time. We are also delighted that we have l-Maise-l back and motivated for this game. Also it warms my heart that JAIKEN is back at home. *Jaiken has since left the team. In continuation of the last question, are you done tooling with the team now or are you still looking for some extra pieces? If you are indeed finalised, what will your starting line-up look like? Time will show, but as you know we've made quite a few acquisitions and I believe all of our players are capable of handling responsibilities at the Elite level. There will be some rotation for sure. Make a guess With all of this in mind, what are your expectations for the upcoming season? And who do you think are the current favourites to win it all? Our expectations this season is to get to know the game and make it to the semi finals, from there on we just hope for the best :) Really hard to say anything at the moment because it's still such a new and different game than the previous one. We haven't even played half of the teams yet so it's hard to say anything about who would be favourites, but The SKY People in Written In The Stars have looked really dangerous. Thanks Bjono and have a nice one! Good luck for the upcoming season! 1. _______________ 2. _______________ 3. _______________ 4. _______________ 5. _______________ 6. _______________ 7. Sjukstugan 8. Northern Stars 9. Unlucky Boys 10. Rusty Blades 11. Almost Famous 12. _____________ (To be released) 13. SIKA 14. Gotham Knights 15. Falun Coal Miners 16. Team Frosty Starting tomorrow, we'll be getting into the real top teams, votes were very tight among the top contenders and come the season, anyone could take the title. Can you guess who's next? (HINT: They're not Finnish)

The German hockey club Düsseldorfer EG will branch out on to the virtual ice in the near future. As the first club of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, the club with tradition dating back to 1935 will soon go into competition mode with its own esports team that will be taking part in several online leagues. The team "DEG eSports" currently consists of twelve experienced online ice hockey players from Germany and Austria. DEG eSports is now looking to follow in the footsteps of SJK eSports in taking a shot at establishing a successful franchise in the 6vs6 community. The team, established by long-time DEG fans Tobias Anton and Steffen Seibert, will mainly focus on competing in the ECL and GCL but also aim to compete in other leagues as opportunities present themselves. All of the teams games will be streamed live on the DEG eSports Facebook page. The members will be representing Düsseldorfer EG both virtually and in real-life events, which will be announced later. The club also promises that various other representatives of Düsseldorfer EG might join in on the fun from time to time. Stefan Adam, Managing Director of DEG Eishockey GmbH: "Esports is a young and dynamic sport, it's a community that is gaining more popularity among hockey fans. We are pleased to announce that we are pioneers with DEG in this environment, with our own esports team. It is a very interesting development in a completely new environment for us, which we are very excited about actively pursuing." Tobias Anton, team captain of DEG eSports: "It's a great thing for us to be the first official team of a DEL club. Our goal was to build an ambitious troupe of DEG fans, but also involve skilled players without the regional background. Our goal is to gain success as fast as possible in the ECL and play for the title in the GCL." Prior to the press conference held by Düsseldorfer EG, I had the pleasure of discussing this new venture with team captain Tobias Anton: Hi there, Tobias! We're very happy to hear about your new opportunity and you must be just as excited. I'm very interested in how the project took off. Could you please comment on that a bit? Well, it all started in June, when we made the suggestion to the german hockey club Düsseldorfer EG. I made a nice presentation with all interesting stuff about esports, questions like "Why esports?", "Why with us?", "Why is it a win-win situation?". They quickly invited us to present our concept live in their offices and after a short negotiation, they finally agreed to go ahead with this project. Now, here we are at the end of September, as representatives of DEG eSports. How did you come up with the idea? Actually, I got this idea after EV Duisburg won ECL6 Lite - they've played together for years, however they aren't an official part of the Duisburg hockey club. I liked the idea to make a team for my favourite hockey club, but I wanted to be serious about it. I am a kind of person who likes to think big, always on the lookout for the next cool thing I could launch. I started off by writing a post in a DEG facebook group, hiring players for a team with the idea of becoming an official esports team one day. Most of the reactions were negative. "You'll never do that', or "Maybe start smaller and not with big ideas like that" - but one guy immediately had the same fire, so we started this club together. I took more of a back-office role in writing to the hockey club and making a presentation as my teammate recruited more players - he knows the community better than I do. So, where do you go from here? How will you be co-operating with Düsseldorfer EG? On social media, we will run our own Facebook page and Twitch channel, but work together with DEG's official press department. So, some of our posts will be presented on their channels (FB, IG, Twitter...), we will have a presentation in the stadium and many more things planned so stay tuned! Today, we're having the press conference and if things go our way, we'll be airing our first training matches on our Twitch channel on Wednesday and Thursday. Do you think the club will expand into other esports in the future? After all, I don't think that the club will expand into other games or sports - it's a hockey thing, it's a regional thing, and there are no plans to do more than that at the moment. Thanks for your time Tobias and good luck in your future games to the team! Congratulations on behalf of the NHLGamer community to @Tümä and the boys!