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As @J-Foppa says above, there are lots of factors at play when deciding on the timelines of leagues and tournaments. ECL is the biggest NHL esports league in the world and we do our best to give players of all levels an enjoyable experience. This is why we've put an enormous effort into the divisional system, rulebook and broadcasting. The audience and players (ideally) only see the success of our work we put in and not the hundreds or thousands of hours that perhaps could have resulted in something amazing, but didn't bear fruit. We've been asked for communication on leagues and tournaments earlier ahead of time and this is feedback that we take seriously and something that also makes our own lives easier. Our original plan was to run the FCL and SCL in the gap that all Finns and Swedes have been experiencing after the ECL 11 season, simultaneously with the GCL, WECL etc. Unfortunately that plan didn't pan out. We were unable to guarantee the FCL and SCL at the capacity that the players have come to expect, so we made the decision together with our prospective partners to aim for the end of the NHL 21 lifecycle with regard to the Finnish and Swedish Championships, in other words after ECL 12. Our goal for NHL 22 is to change this order into ECL 13 - FCL/GCL/SCL - ECL 14. While it on the surface level can look like very little has happened since the end of the ECL 11 season, a lot of time has gone into reflecting on the previous seasons, improving our routines, introducing new policies, planning ahead and working on securing long-term partnerships that enable us to plan a year ahead rather than 3 months. Honestly, in my opinion that's the only way we can keep developing our ecosystem and creating the best leagues and tournaments in the world. Your feedback is welcome, as always - I just ask you to try to keep in mind that the planning of these leagues and tournaments nowadays is slightly more complicated than drawing a rectangle into the calendar. The demand for high prize pools, more broadcasts and high quality content is always rising and in this case that has meant more preparation than ever.

This feel like politics. It doesnt make sense but there are probably unknown factors at stake that I will never understand. Can NHLGamer at least provide a good explanation for wives/GFs when we cancel the summer vacation?

Sign-up period 1: 22.3-7.4, applies to ECL Elite Regular Season Kick-Off Dates: ECL Elite 24.5

Some kind of warm up tournament would be nice ✌🏻

Summer Cup 2022?

Yeah, have fun captains booking games in the middle of the vacation period...

A little bit of feedback on all of this: - Informing about a qualification series in the middle of ECL 11 The season (almost) played out fairly but it could have not been a more ill-advised thing to do, mostly because of the fact that it basically alters the pre-requisites of the entire tournament for everyone below Elite - Allowing wild card teams in the qualifiers This is wrong in my opinion, very wrong. We are going in to the 12th iteration of ECL and we have well established frameworks for the league and it must be disheartening for teams in Lite (#10-13) to be denied a fighting chance in favor for wildcards. In other words, the communitys (admins and NHLGamer staff included) perception of a team weighs heavier than last seasons results. Of course you can base it on individual stats, previous team stats from previous tournaments and such, but the data is most likely outdated and there are far more factors that weigh in to be able to make a fair judgement of a teams "skill". But this is my personal opinion, everyone is of course entitled to their own opinion - Scheduling of ECL 12 As J-Foppa said, there must be some factors unknown to us community members that forces the decision to play out most of the tournament during the summer months. Either way, I think that it would have been better to wait until late August or just get on with it straight away. I have been an advocate for strict schedules for some time, meaning that I think that the rules for re-schedualing are way too relaxed as of now. It will most probably be a mediocre tournament since most teams need to broaden their rosters and schedualing will be pure hell due to people not being available, hence the scheduals can't be followed and we are back to square one

RIP Summer Cup 🕯️

summer cup!

Interested in playing some other teams then our 20 team-pool outside of the EASHL-Playoffs 🖐

Please skip that tournament and start with the qualify and ecl season instead. Do that other tournament in the summer.

The long break between signups and kick off is due to the information about participating teams being vital for being able to determine the available spots that the qualifiers are played for. Our goal is also to cover the finals of each division in the order of Neo - Core - Lite - Pro & Elite as per previous year feedback that the season should end with the Elite finals coverage, also giving everyone the opportunity to enjoy the Elite (and other) finals instead of playing at the same time. As always, we are open to feedback on this topic for the future seasons.

Thanks for the feedback. We would be interested in hearing the wishes on the type of warm-up tournament that everyone would want - should it be a total wild west or elite + pro, lite + core + neo type of system, or what would you like to see? We have to keep in mind that the teams playing in the qualifiers might have a harder time participating - and perhaps they should not, as they have up to 3 weeks of qualifying games to play either way(?). Edit: It would probably make most sense to put Pro and Elite together as they start their season later and have the opportunity to play the warm-up tournament longer than the other divisions.

I think almost every team wants to play some sort of tournament before ECL 12. Hopefully this warm-up tournament has some kinda division or level system! For example elite and pro teams plays together etc..

Correct, they will sign up for the one division and be moved based on the result of the qualifier. More details to follow when the sign-ups go live.