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The League Administration has made some changes/clarifications to the rulebook. Please see the specifics below. You may access the rulebook through the usual links, or by clicking here. Neo: Playoffs Given ECL Neo’s unique standing in the ECL system, we often have to examine the current state of play regarding the division, and this season is no different. In the rulebook published for this season, we stated that five teams from each group, plus the next two highest ranked teams would progress to the playoffs – this would have given us 32 teams when working under the assumption that there would be six groups of teams. However, due to this season having four groups of teams, we have decided to make the following adjustments: The overall number of playoff teams will be moved to 24 from 32 The number of teams making the playoffs from each group will rise to 6 To make this number of playoff teams work (24 cannot work in a standard playoff structure where exactly half the number of teams are eliminated each round), the top two teams from each group will progress directly to the second round (seeds 1 – 8), whilst the remaining teams (seeds 9-24) will play in the first round, with the victors joining the top 8 seeds in the second round.   Pro / Core / Lite Prize Pool   The Licenses have been tallied up for each division and we can announce the final prize pools for the Pro, Lite and Core Winter seasons. The number of licenses purchased for the divisions were: Pro 32 (Compulsory) Lite 28 Core 37 After deducting the payment provider fees and VAT, the payouts for the divisions will be as per the below image. As a reminder, the prize pool only applies to teams who purchased the license. For a full list of Lite and Core licenses, see below: Disconnect Protocol: Update Due to a set of cases pertaining to disconnects and how teams are supposed to act, we have decided to update and add further clarification as to how team's should approach the situation: If the player has disconnected (icon not shown above their in-game player's head) before face-off, the game will stop immediately and teams are required to clear the puck.   If the player has disconnected (icon not shown above their in-game player's head) and the puck is in the neutral zone, the game will stop immediately and teams are required to clear the puck. The above rule does not apply if a player disconnects outside of the game situation, e.g., while a counter-attack is taking place. If this occurs, then teams must: Play out the immediate game situation. Once the initial game situation has been played out (e.g., odd-man rush no-longer applies) teams are required to clear the puck as soon as possible. If there are disagreements whether a goal scored during this time should count or not, teams must submit video proof to League Administration for review   If a player drops in either offensive/defensive zone the immediate game situation should be played out. The game situation cannot be extended beyond this and teams are required to clear the puck as soon as possible   If there are disagreements whether a goal scored during this time should count or not, teams may submit video proof to League Administration for review   EA Update Issues & Subsequent Rescheduling In a recent update that EA published, it made entering World of Chel difficult for some players, meaning that unfortunately some games were postponed. As such an event is outside the realm of control for teams, we have decided to make some slight modifications to some of the deadlines to finish the regular season. As such, the rulebook now states that: All regular season games in ECL Elite must be finished by the close of the 10th of February 2022; ECL Pro by the 6th of February 2022 ECL Lite by the 6th of February 2022 ECL Core by the 3rd of February 2022 ECL Neo by the 3rd of February 2022.   With that being said, we ask that teams try to finish and report their games as soon as possible, in order for our staff to set up the playoffs and for our writers to write the playoff previews.

NOTE: This article was written on Monday, 31st of January and reflects the situation prior to the matchups that evening. We started off the week with a very hot matchup in the broadcast, as SAWO ESPORTS and HAVU Gaming clashed. Both teams are currently in great form and the games had both big points and pride at stake. SAWO have started off with an explosion and surged towards securing a playoff berth with the lead of Valtteri @Vattuyy Virtanen and Jere @jxrska Laukka on the wings, whereas HAVU Gaming have slowly found their winning ways after an exceptionally slow start to the season. Eventually, it all came down to the clinic that SAWO ESPORTS goaltender Niklas @uhNikke Nieminen put on display to clinch wins in both games for his team, earning him one of the best performances of the week already on Monday evening.  Atop the standings we can still find hREDS, who suffered their first few losses of the season over the course of the last week. It was a tough week to say the least for the big, bad REDS, who faced IQUE, Frölunda HC and GOONS with three wins, two losses and an OT loss as the outcome. Frölunda HC currently stand back in 5th place, but have some games in hand on the teams ahead of them. The Indians are looking strong as usual and won all of their four games over the past week, despite extending to overtime against both hREDS and Roots Gaming. Especially the big wins against hREDS will give them a big boost of confidence if the two end up clashing in the postseason eventually. Around the middle of the pack, it's great to see that Swiss outfit ZSC Esports have managed to mount a formidable playoff push by racking up a nice four wins in their six games of the week, including two massive OT wins against Örebro Hockey. Big efforts by captain Sven @Original-SnuS Julmi and his winger turned backup goaltender Alex @IDangledYouOut Wagner have propelled them on an upwards trajectory that might just be enough to reach into the playoff race. There's still a lot of work left to be done, but things are looking good if they can keep their form up. One team that started their season in great form, but has cooled off quite fast is Örebro Hockey. The team managed to win great teams like Frölunda HC and IQUE early on, but have now fallen into a losing fashion, faltering in games against ZSC Esports, Conquer Gaming and Färjestad BK lately. There's still a case pending investigation by the League Administration regarding their home matchup against Färjestad, so the end result for that one is yet to be determined. Either way, Örebro will need to course correct sooner than later if they want to sneak into the playoffs this season.  In addition to Örebro, another team that started their season in great shape but have since slipped into losing ways in GOONS, who have only collected four points out of their eight latest games. They have had some minor issues with scoring, but also with possession play to some extent, not in terms of being outpossessed, but they are having some trouble setting up plays from time to time and have to resort to counter attacking a bit too much as a result. This week will bring games against Roots Gaming, Örebro and ZSC Esports, so GOONS are hoping to turn their ship around and rack up some much needed points in these games.  HAVU Gaming had an excellent week as a team, but individually, Juho @RutonMosse Kinnunen (Juigelson) seems to be heating up too. The younger Kinnunen brother is now cashing in on the potential and all the hype surrounding him over the years. With 19+19=38 points in 18 games at this point of the season, the winger is on track for a career season and is manning the #1 spot in league scoring at the moment. Our newest site update has brought some new individual statistics, bringing new layers to statistical analysis. Among skaters an interesting notion is that IQUE forward Janne @Nieppii Niemelä sticks out like a sore thumb as the forward with the most possession time by far. This further emphasizes the importance of Nieppi for his team, but also raises some questions about the style of play that IQUE are enforcing. An impressive stat going along with that possession time is the fact that Nieppi has drawn the most penalties league-wide with 17 infractions by opposing players toward him. It's been an equally impressive week for both HAVU Gaming defensemen Kristian-Mikael @Nassustelija Katajisto and Wille @willekunq Juntunen, who are currently manning the #1 and #3 spots in point production for defensemen. Especially Nassustelija boosted his stat line with a good 11 points in the past six games. Young Niko @vVoDee Vottonen continues impressing for Roots Gaming, despite not topping the tables in any statistics, he has been very active all around the ice by laying the body causing turnovers, and jumping in on the offense when given the opportunity. He is an early nominee for rookie of the season in my mind. 

Another week of ECL Elite has been played and I don’t think the action thus far has left anyone hanging. We are getting closer to the mid-season point as every team has now played against five or six opponents. This week, the last teams got their first wins of the season but we still got one team without any losses as hREDS won all of their six games this week, continuing undefeated. When we are talking about hot teams there is no denying that SAWO ESPORTS is one of those. Right now, they are at 2nd place in the standings and have won eight games in a row. They have three losses under their belt but two of those were against hREDS and one against IQUE, equally hot teams. All of those games were one goal games. Goal scoring hasn't been a problem for these young guys as both of their wingers Jere @jxrska Laukka and Valtteri @Vattuyy Virtanen have snuck into the top 5 of goal scorers within the league. Especially @Vattuyy was on fire last week with 13 goals in eight games. Another team that has just kept improving their game is IQUE. They started the week with full points against Conquer Gaming which isn't that surprising as they are right now manning the last place in the league. After that IQUE had their toughest challenge so far this season against Frölunda HC. A win against them in the other game was already a surprise but IQUE didn't stop there as they managed to get four points against another favorite GOONS. A huge week for IQUE and this week definitely gave them keys to the future. Captain Janne @Nieppii Niemelä showed his leadership for the team by scoring three of five goals against GOONS including the game winning goal in both games. On the other hand, those games against IQUE were not what GOONS wanted. Those two losses increased their losing streak to four games, as earlier in the week they lost both games to Färjestad BK. The Swedish team is right now in 5th place but their week ended in a loss against YMCA Esports. At the same time Färjestad BK said goodbye to their winning streak which ended up being seven games long. One important factor for them being in good form is definitely their goalie Johan @McSavid Rundqvist who gave them a chance to win in the last game of the week allowing only one goal. Speaking of YMCA Esports, they still have a lot of improvement to make in their game even though they managed to get four points out of another Swedish group, Granit Gaming. After a bit of a slow start, multiple champion HAVU Gaming is seeming to get back into form. We have to remember that this week their opponents weren't top tier but still, you have to get points from all possible games and that's what HAVU Gaming did as they got their six game winning streak going. An important thing for the future was that Tuukka @FlyerKungen Kuha got much needed success on the goal scoring front with eight goals last week, including two hat-tricks against Northern Ascendancy. The last four teams in the league right now are Northern Ascendancy, Djurgården Hockey, HV71 and Conquer Gaming. Djurgården Hockey have troubles scoring, only averaging a goal each game. The other three have to find a way to shut their doors as they are getting scored on at a rate of 3.0 goals per game or higher. Out of these team's, we have to mention Daniel @Demski_ Gadd and his performance last week for HV71 as against Roots Gaming. In the first game he scored the overtime winning goal and after that had a hat-trick in the second match. A big reason for hREDS keeping their winning streak alive this week was Vili @Vilupoika Häkkinen, who scored a total of 11+7=18 points this week and had a 4 goal night against Örebro Hockey. We've also seen two new scoring duos sneak into the top 10. HAVU's Risto @Dominointi Järvi had a good week with together with @FlyerKungen, while SAWO dynamic duo @Vattuyy and @jxrska scored 27 goals combined out of SAWO's 31 in the past week. Our top 3 is the exact same as last week in terms of defender scoring. Aleksi @loimmu Loimuvirta is still in search of twine in 1st place with 14 assists. Niko @vVoDee Vottonen from Roots Gaming has found a way to put the puck in the net, leading all defensemen with four goals. In 7th place, we can find Fredrik @maharajah2014(sparkaronnberg) Mickelsson-Holm who, besides scoring points also blocked 28 shots which is the most among defensemen by a clear margin. Wille @willekunq Juntunen had a crazy six-point night against Northern Ascendancy, which boosted him a bit, let's see if he can repeat that later on. Transfers Granit Gaming IN Reittu @Roisto999 Hynynen, Goaltender The first transfer has been seen as Reittu @Roisto999Hynynen went to Granit Gaming. Last season he played in SAWO ESPORTS and has been on the free market until now. The goalie, who has been playing since ECL 4 will bring them a lot of experience and a culture of winning. We will see if he gets games for the Swedish team but one thing is sure that he will be good motivator for Edvin @Thunborg5Thunborg to stop pucks at an even better rate than before.