Leaderboard

SportsGamers, After a gruelling finals series, where one team had to face disappointment once again, we have a new ECL Pro Champion! Växjö Lakers were on a mission to redeem their glory after a disastrous Winter campaign and in the finals, they got the better of Reality Check, who were on their second straight finals run, once again coming up just short. Reality Check will be facing Stargazing in a relegation series to determine their fate for next season. Växjö Lakers' s road to the championship: #1 seed from group 2 with the record 23-5-2 Round 1: vs Geekz Energy eSports (8) 4-1 Quarterfinals: vs Herlev Eagles (13) 4-2 Semifinals: vs HanaaHC (3) 4-0 Finals: vs Reality Check (1) 4-1 The winning roster: GOALTENDERS #38 Erik @MrAllsvenskan Rotsenius #86 Toni @hulkamaania (zeukki_) Panagopulos DEFENSEMEN #27 Samuel @EDHOLMEN3 Edholm (C) #88 Johannes @Hockeyjohannes Hultmark (A) FORWARDS #4 Mikkel @Birkedal96 Birkedal (A) #61 Adam @dzouvi Mensik #91 Fredrik @Kattenj Jansson   Congratulations to the champions on behalf of the entire community, and a warm thank you to all participants!

The last four teams are left and we move to the Semifinals stage of the Lite division. A long season sees it's end when the best teams face each other for a place in the Finals. Who will gain a straight Pro spot for next season? Will someone be able to find another gear or pull an ace from their sleeve? Structure & Prize Pool Schedule The teams that are left aren't that surprising after all, but especially Valco came all the way through seed #26 and won the seeds #1 Arkham Asylum and seed #2 Tadpole with the lead of goal scorer by God’s grace - captain @itspardytime, who has found a new level with the whole team. Among the goalies, @Misantti and @DUNZA have been on their own level. (6) Spirit vs Valco (26) In this one, we're looking at two pretty different teams, with some striking similarity at the same time. Both teams trust their right side like a rock. Valco plays many situations through their captain @itspardytime. Also @Toivonen_ from Spirit seems to be their main guy for attacking. So the winner of the series will probably be the team who can change their playstyle during the series because the two main guys will be marked men. Follow @NuariJamal and @VesKuLiNe. (7) IK Oskarshamn vs Synergy Hockey (10) Swedish clash. While Synergy Hockey have been marching their way to this stage of the playoffs, IK Oskarshamn have had a bit more of a bumpy road. Two game seven wins still shows that they deserve to be here and the team holds that certain resilience. IK Oskarshamn looks a bit like last season’s winner Mora IK. A strong five man unit and their wingers score at a very high rate. @snippystatue leads his teams scoring and will be battling with the experienced @Supremski throughout the series. Follow that clash, it might be the series decider. Socials Here's an update to the social media instructions. Our sponsors this season are Kouvolan Lakritsi, St Hockey & Wilhelm. Twitter: When posting tweets of your lineups, matchups, recaps, clips, articles - or any other content you might want to create - please make sure to tag the following accounts and hashtag: @SportsGamerGG #ECL22Spring #NHL22 #esports #kouvolanlakritsi #MukanaWilhelm Instagram: When posting on Instagram, please make sure to tag the following accounts and hashtag: @SportsGamerGG #ECL22Spring #NHL22 #esports #kouvolanlakritsi #MukanaWilhelm Note: It is very helpful and critical for us to succeed in getting our partners tagged, so they get the necessary mentions and interaction to validate their participation in the future. That being said, it is understandable that there may be circumstances due to your other partners where you are unable to tag competition etc. Your support is appreciated. As there are quite a few hashtags by now, especially from a Twitter perspective with limited characters, we recommend using at least #ECL22Spring in the text part of the tweet and leave the sponsor tags for the end. If you need to cut out tags, remove #esports and #NHL22. For Instagram this shouldn't be an issue.

This weekend, the 2022 NHL GWC European Finals were concluded in Maastricht, the Netherlands and after a long tournament and some dramatic events throughout the weekend, the golden boy Erik @Eki Tammenpää secured his back-to-back title. With the grand prize of 15 000 USD at stake and for most players, the return to LAN events in practice was a very exciting setting for the weekend in Maastricht at the GG DreamHack Sports Festival, which eventually culminated with the crowning of a new European NHL GWC Champion. The contenders had all paved their way through a gruelling online qualifier stage, and eventually the eight best players were invited to enter the final weekend. Here's a list of those contenders: Erik @Eki Tammenpää 🇫🇮 Johan @Lehmannens Lehmann 🇸🇪 Henrik @Eken45jr Eklund 🇸🇪 Olli "IOLL1" Lehtimäki 🇫🇮  Jimi @jamal-_- Rönkkönen 🇫🇮 Teemu @Teemuyy Polttila 🇫🇮 Aaro @xDoumi Ruuhinen 🇫🇮 Perttu @Beniittto Kemppainen 🇫🇮 Eventually, after lots of excitement and even some controversy we saw the Finns Eki and J-_-Jamaltheman qualify for the finals, and the two truly proved that both of them could be worthy of the Championship. The two of them went head-to-head in a full three game series, trading blows in a true ebb and flow situation. The first game of the finals was a 3-1 win for the defending champion Eki, and it looked like he had it all under control, but in the low-scoring series Jamal was able to surprise in the second game, taking it to a decisive third match. After a full three periods of the third game, the game was tied at 1-1 and we knew we'd see a worthy finish for the European NHL GWC Finals - the two best players going at it for one goal only. As the title of our article suggests, the scorer was eventually Eki, who managed to secure his back-to-back title! We reached out to the Champion for some comments about his feat: How would you compare this campaign to the one you had last year, and who was the best opponent you played? Well obviously the biggest difference was the LAN finals. It's all different when you get to see everyone and play at 0 ping, which is always great. I have to say that @jamal-_- was in a class of his own today, the finals were absolutely crazy and it speaks volumes that we went all the way to game 3 OT. I feel like he was way calmer than everyone else around and some of the dekes and plays he tried to pull were very different. The fact that he managed to stay so relaxed put me in a tough place since it's usually way easier to play off your opponents when you can tell they're nervous.  What are your thoughts about this years GWC overall and the format, how about the live finals? The format was good, I liked the fact that we had the draft earlier than before (already at the top 16 stage) and that the console qualifiers had a double elimination format. However, I've always wanted the GWC to be a longer tournament and for players to have more chances to qualify, I'm not a big fan of the "one and you're done format". Naturally it makes for some thrilling moments as we witnessed today but in general it's not my cup of tea.  How has it been for you to return to LAN games after a longer pause with the pandemic? It's been great. I already got some touch for playing big LAN games in Tampa Bay earlier this year. I've always been good at LANs for some reason, my first ever tournament I finished second although I by no means were the second best player at the event, but ever since then it's just been working for me. I can't tell why but maybe I'm just less nervous than the competition or can better use the advantage from the 0 ping factor, I'm just guessing but some of that could be. Finally, how are you going to celebrate this Championship? It's 10 PM and I'm at the hotel answering these interview questions, so that's pretty much it! We've got an early flight tomorrow and I'm not one to party too much anyways, so maybe I'll figure something out when I'm home but no bigger plans than that.  On behalf of the SportsGamer community, I extend a heartfelt thank you to the Champion and congratulations on the title! Now it's time for all the contenders to turn their heads toward next year and what's to come, maybe that will be your time to challenge Eki?