ECL Playoffs Broadcast - April 19, 20:50 CEST

Hey NHLGamers,

The ECL Playoff continue tonight! Starting at 20:50 CEST, be sure to join our ECL Playoff stream, as we cover two very exciting matchups tonight. The first one will be between ECL Pro teams Monarchs and Almost Famous, as they are finishing their semi-final series that currently stands 3-2 for Monarchs. Our second matchup of the night will be the Elite relegation faceoff between Nordic Stars and White Trash. You can find a prediction for that matchup by scrolling down.

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 (2) Monarchs vs Almost Famous (3)

Monarchs impressed everyone so far this season. Mentioned as the underdog in our season preview, they topped their group and have only lost two games in this seasons playoffs so far. The team - previously called Lavetten - had a sweep in the first round and nearly controlled all of their second round matchup against Red Machine. Led by the captain @chavelski in net, the whole team showed up as a future Elite team. @pajenc , @Tacterz and @Zalaz know every trick of the game and are able to spin the defense's heads around.

Almost Famous tries to accomplish the walk-trough from Lite to Elite in only two seasons. They flew under the radar at the beginning of the season, but were noticed by everyone, starting their first Pro-season 9-1-0, with wins over the top contenders Shameful Knights and Baltic Sea Eagles. As in the regular season, they defeated the Baltic Sea Eagles in the second round (4-1) and try to keep their hope of the Elite division alive. They don't win their games in a spectacular fashion, but @Ikavalko , @Rimpe and @Devilfish14 strike whenever they have to.

As part of the regular season in group 1 they already played two games against each other. Both teams won their respective home games (3:1 and 4:2) so we can expect a really tough matchup and a long series!

Prediction: 4:3 Monarchs

Games so far in this series:
Game 1: Monarchs - Almost Famous 0-3
Game 2: Almost Famous - Monarchs 1-3
Game 3: Monarchs - Almost Famous 1-0 OT
Game 4: Almost Famous - Monarchs 3-5
Game 5: Monarchs - Almost Famous 2-3 OT

After these two settling who will go on to the ECL Pro Finals, we jump over to the ECL Relegation Faceoff, where the winner of the two teams will be seen in ECL Elite next season. The teams are playing a total of four games tonight, starting at 21:00 CEST as well and we will join in on the action as soon as the first series of tonight is settled.

 White Trash – Nordic Stars 

These two teams are certainly no strangers to each other, despite playing in different divisions this season, they spent the last two seasons battling for the promotion in Pro. In fact, these two have met in playoff series both in ECL 4 and 5. The series wins are currently even at 1-1. The Nordic Stars roster seems to have experienced quite a few changes over the years, as captain @Seahyena is the only player who has played in the previous two series between these teams. On the other end, White Trash captain @Zip player has also played both series, but so has @Kane, @rGinnu and @plymalkin. We’ll see how the third series in as many seasons between these two turns out.

Nordic Stars were surely excited to have been promoted to Elite during the offseason. In our season preview, we expected the team to have a difficult time keeping up in Elite. The beginning of the season was a feeling-out process, but Nordic stars put themselves in a bit of a hole by going 1-8-1 to start the season. They managed to turn the ship around a bit after the first ten games, but it wasn’t quite enough. In the end, they finished with a 9-15-6 regular season record, which isn’t bad for a team that was promoted in the offseason and had a complete roster overhaul. The biggest factor this season for Nordic Stars was most likely not being able to gel enough to create chemistry in team defense. The team managed to score enough to keep up with the rest, but fell short when it comes to their goals against average, a statistic that ended up being 3,03/game. That simply isn’t good enough to win games in a tight Elite division.

The opponent White Trash had yet another good season in Pro. They’re an established Pro team and must be very hungry to prove to the community that they can compete with the big boys in Elite. Our Pro season preview noted White Trash as one of the top contenders this season. They went into the season with a small roster and managed to close out the season with only 8 players making an appearance. The playoffs ended in the Semi-Finals against FILADELPHIA, a series in which White Trash without a doubt was the underdog. White Trash will be relying on their vast experience and good chemistry to edge out Nordic stars in this matchup. As expected, they will ice the same lineup we saw throughout the Pro playoffs.

It's hard to predict how this series will go, as the teams come into this series from different backgrounds; White Trash has gotten this far by succeeding during the season, whereas Nordic Stars has had a tough one. The want to play and fight for the win will be a key aspect in which of these teams will be seen in ECL Elite next season.

Below you will find the lineups for both matchups tonight:

The games will be broadcasted on the NHLGamer Twitch channel, at twitch.tv/NHLGamerTwitch. The games will feature commentary by @Janikka and @Kenu. We'll see you there!