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After some external difficulties and other issues, we've been able to compete the ECL7 Elite Quarter Finals with four extremely skilled teams advancing. Interestingly enough, we're also 4/4 for IS Cup 3: 6vs6 finalists in the Semi's of ECL 7. It'll be interesting to see how these games turn out this time around, as matchups are slightly different and some minor changes might have happened within the teams. As usual, the series are played with a best-of-7 system, meaning the first team to reach four wins advances to the next round. The Semifinal round has to be finished by Thursday December 13th, 2018. These are the matchups for the second round of our ECL 7 Elite Playoffs: (1) FILADELPHIA vs. Dynasty (4) Courtesy of @jahajaha93 Neither of these teams had a straight path to the semi-finals. FILADELPHIA in the sense that they had to battle through some server issues and a scheduling debacle, which again heated up things on the community side a bit. Dynasty in the sense that they clashed with Sjukstugan, the early Swedish sensation, who were now making their second Elite playoff showing, hungry to prove they could go far. This matchup wouldn't seem all too interesting if the teams we would take it back a month to the IS Cup, as Dynasty had a tough time competing at the Final event whereas FILADELPHIA went on to take it all home. Tables have turned, however. It's amazing how a little bit of time can work magic on the play of any said team. Dynasty has improved tremendously with the season progressing and are now looking to really challenge the IS Cup champions. One notable change Dynasty has made as of late is keeping @Leksa94 at center instead of @Tehh, as we're used to seeing. It would seem as if their decision is paying dividends as Leksa is a more offensive-minded player, with a slightly higher faceoff skill too - if we are to trust the stats. FILADELPHIA, on the other hand has been firing on all cylinders all season long. The team seems to have a relentless drive for success. Their first round opponent Northern Ascendancy didn't give up easy although the series ended 4-1, all but the last game were one goal games. FILA will surely look to play @Zande95 in net as he is yet to let in a goal during the playoffs. Possible Elite top-6 goaltender this season? Personally, I'm expecting FILADELPHIA to take the lead and never look back in this series. Although Dynasty is more than a capable team, they are simply up against a stronger force right now. I'll be more than happy to admit I'm wrong as that would set up an amazing success story for DYN, however, my prediction is FILA in 5. (2) Symphony vs. Written In The Stars (3) Courtesy of @MartindalexC Both competitors are coming off of similarly impressive routs of their previous opponents in Northern Stars & Butterfly Effect respectively. Symphony holds a slight edge given that they beat their opponent by over two goals in all but one of their wins, whereas Written only managed to do that very same feat two times. On the face of it then one would imagine that this series should be a close affair, with that said however some cracks have started to appear for the Written side. They may have beaten Butterfly Effect extremely convincingly to start the series (4-1 & 5-0 wins), yet their play degraded quite heavily as the series went on, as shown by them whimpering through to the second round off the back of two 1-0 wins, as well as being bested 3-1 by FLY. Such a drop off of goals as the series progressed is certainly a large red flag, especially as Butterfly Effect almost punished them for it. If FLY were almost able to make them look foolish then Written are in for one hell of a rude awakening as Symphony are assuredly better than Butterfly Effect, both defensively and offensively. The latter point is of great importance as we will now truly see what impact @Totalii's absence will have on the somewhat ‘untested’ Written back end. Regarding the actual prediction however I feel that this series has real potential to be an absolute bloodbath, on the other hand I can conceivably see Written getting ‘manhandled’ by Symphony in a bunch of 3-1-ish affairs if Written does not manage to restart their offence in time. Therefore, I’m going to play it somewhat safe and go with Symphony in 6 games, although as I’ve said before I feel as though this series, more than any other, has the potential to go absolutely ‘hay-wire’ at any second. So, what do you guys think? Agree with our predictions? Give us your thoughts below! Also, remember to stay tuned for upcoming playoffs broadcasts on our Twitch-channel! See you on the ice, ECL Elite Writing Team

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!