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Hello NHLGamers, For this past regular season of ECL Elite we have been releasing a recurring segment that looked to detail the ‘hottest’, ‘coldest’ and… ‘mildest’? teams in Elite over each week. The logic behind these rankings was / is admittedly a sort of internal subjective ranking that weighs up results, opposition 'strength' as well as thoughts on the general play during some games. As such a ranking is not 100% quantifiable in nature there admittably has been some bias that has crept in from time to time. First off I would like to apologise for this article being, well, late. Given how many teams played on the final day of the season and with the playoffs starting the very next day I felt it that it was perhaps not the greatest idea to push this out, on top of this I was still deciding what form this article should take on exactly. Despite this I still have ranked the team's based on their performance from the past week although this time the rankings will be sans the write-ups coupling them. If you just want to see these rankings and don't mind missing out on some grade 'A' statistical analysis then you can just skip to the end of the article where the familiar list will be shown. Previous rankings: Week 0 (16in16) Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Anyway, with that out of the way we may as well get into it. This article will be attempting to deal with the quantative nature of these rankings, effectively trying to make sense of the 'noise' so to speak, as well as try to pinpoint any trends that may have occured. As such, this 'edition' is almost the complete opposite to articles from weeks prior. *Note: As Radical were disqualified part of the way through the season they will be represented on the three charts immediately below, however, past that point they will be omitted. 'Welcome to the Noise' Figure 1. All teams that participated in ECL 7 Elite (including Radical) are shown above, plotting each team's respective ranking through week 1 to 5, with the additional inclusion of the week '0' which is otherwise known as the 16in16 series. Generally speaking there is not much to take away from this, although if you squint especially hard you can see that there was a slight period mid way through the season (wks 2-4) where there was some form of normality, that said this was quickly dashed by the tumultuous 5th week. Playoff bound teams (Average ranking: 5.65) Figure 2. In this we find all non-playoff teams have been eliminated so that we can see how each playoff team found their way into the 'promised land'. There are two notable trends here, one being NORs rather last second climb (at the cost of Unlucky Boys), as well as SYMs unparalleled consistency where they found themselves never dropping below the 5th spot each week. Teams that missed the playoffs (Average ranking: 11.35) Figure 3. Here we find that all of the playoff teams have been omitted and instead we have the 'rest' of elite. Regarding trends that can be seen there are at least three. Firstly, we have the collapse of Unlucky Boys (as alluded to in the past graph), as well as the similarly (but not as extreme) collapse of Rusty Blades. Finally, mention should be made of SIKA never reaching higher than 12th spot on any of the weekly rankings, perhaps underlining the forgetable season that they had. Most 'consistent' teams Figure 4. In this graph we have 5 teams selected based on them being the most consistent teams throughout the table. It is worth mentioning here how it is somewhat interesting how a clear division emerged between these consistent teams, signaling perhaps the difference between those at the very top of elite and those propping it up at the bottom. Most 'erratic' teams Figure 5. Personally, this is my favourite entry in this article. Just looking at NORs line go from 13th to 3rd in two weeks imbues me with an indescribable feeling of amusement and anguish. Additionally, I have tried somewhat to sort of dismiss week 0 throughout this and instead have attempted to go off weeks 1-5 almost exclusively, that said I could not help myself but factor '0' into this one just because of Butterfly Effect and their 'twin peaked' line. Largest overall climbs Figure 6. Who doesn't love a good feel good story? Probably Almost Famous as despite them going on a pretty impressive run, moving up from 14th in week 2 to 6th in week 5, they found themselves 8pts shy of a playoff berth. Aside from NOR who I have already talked about in previous graphs we have the only remaining team here in Dynasty, who went on an overall incline where large steps forward were mixed in with a couple 'missteps'. Nevertheless DYNs ascent from 12th to 1st in 3 weeks is mightily impressive, even if they immediately dropped off to 4th the following week. Largest demises Figure 7. I sort of feel bad for ragging on these two teams so hard but I just had to isolate them and exhibit this in all it's glory. Outside of week 5 one would not be wrong in feeling that both of these teams were on course for a playoff berth, and a comfortable one at that for UB. Well, even slipping up for just a lone week can seriously danger, if not outright kill, a playoff challenge and RB / UB are the two newest teams to feel the sting of such an event. Each team managed to only pick up 5pts out of a possible 16pts in the final week. In fact, if UB had just managed to record a single extra point from somewhere would have clinched them a playoff spot over NOR. Additional notes: Of the 8 teams predicted to make the playoffs in the 16in16 series, 7 made the playoffs, with the only team that ECL captains failed to accurately judge being the ever-surprising Butterfly Effect. The biggest change in position (across weeks 1-5, excluding 0's effects) was a -11, exhibited by Unlucky Boys in week 5. Comparatively, the largest uptick in position was found to have been +7, shared by Northern Ascendancy as well as Filadelphia in week 5. Week 5 Ranking 1. Symphony (8-1-1) [+1] 2. Filadelphia (9-1-0) [+7] 3. Northern Ascendancy (9-2-1) [+7] 4. Dynasty (7-2-0) [-3] 5. Written in the Stars (8-1-1) [+1] 6. Almost Famous (3-4-1) [+5] 7. Sjukstugan (6-3-1) [-3] 8. Northern Stars (5-4-1) [+4] 9. Gotham Knights (3-3-4) [-2] 10. Butterfly Effect (4-6-0) [-2] 11. Team Frosty (2-5-3) [+2] 12. Sika (1-2-3) [+3] 13. Rusty Blades (2-5-1) [-8] 14. Unlucky Boys (2-5-1) [-11] 15. Falun Coal Miners (1-6-1) [-1] 16. Radical (disq) [=] And with that we are done for this season, I would like to say thank you to all of those who have read this series over the past few weeks. Are there any trends you feel that I've missed? If so, please write below and I'll update the post if I feel that it is worth mentioning!

Hey NHLGamers, A new patch is scheduled to be released today at 11am CET (7th Dec.). Generally speaking it appears as though this patch is certainly not as 'extensive' as the previous patch, nevertheless there are still some gameplay changes of note. For instance, they claim to have fixed an issue where one's player would attempt a forehand shot when their stick was held out on backhand. In addition to this, albeit not quite 'gameplay' related, EA also claims to have fixed the issue with challenge lobbies where the side selection option was not working correctly in EASHL, something which at the very least should save a few minutes of time on each and every game day going forward. The main bulk of this patch however comes in the form of fixing miscellaneous bugs, such as the mascot in EASHL not showing up, as well as adding additional jerseys to the game. The full changelog is as follows: What do you think about the new patch? Let us know in the comments!