NHLGamers,

Almost two weeks ago, we announced our venture into the North American NHL gaming scene and we received a warm welcome! Registrations have come along nicely, but there's still some space both in our Elite and Pro divisions. 

The Elite division is aimed at teams who are looking to play at a highly competitive level and fight for the prize pool of $3000*. The Pro division on the other hand is aimed for teams that are looking to introduce themselves into more competitive play and enter the world of 6vs6 leagues.

An excerpt from our NACL announcement:

Quote

NHLGamer’s goal for the first season is to provide an Elite and Pro division for the North American players on the Xbox console. The Elite division will have the best NA teams competing for a monetary prize consisting of buy-ins ($200) from the teams, while our Pro division will be a free division, where teams will have the chance to compete for promotion spots to play in the Elite division. There will be promotions and relegations between the two divisions. The sizes of both divisions will be determined by the total amount of teams that sign up.

We're really excited to have two as experienced guys as @Scheckel29 and @TheCreasePolice running our league. They will provide lots of knowledge and will work together with existing pieces in the NHLGamer staff in order to bring our new NA players an excellent first season to build upon and strive for bigger things.

In order to kickstart the NACL 1 season, I got in touch with @Scheckel29 for a short interview:

Please introduce yourself to the community

My name is Scheckel29, most commonly known by my last name Scheckel or Scheck. I am one of the original players of EASHL. I fell in love with the game mode in NHL 09 and haven't looked back. I have been around the competitive community since then and mostly play goalie, although my secret that I can actually play forward decently well was let out of the bag recently in another league. I am the current goalie for Entourage, a new team, but filled with players that have been around the scene for a few years and have won some money leagues in the past. I was born and raised in Wisconsin and proud to be a cheesehead!  Currently getting my masters, my full time job has me working lots of weekends and starting up NACL is really all I have time to do besides playing video games in my free time.

What do you expect from the first season of NACL?

I hope we have a good amount of familiar top NA teams that can put on a competitive season. I hope we can have some great broadcasts to show NHLGamer and the world, that 6s can be very entertaining. Also would like to see a successful PSN league as there really isn't much out there for PS players on the competitive side in North America. A successful season is one with few forfeits and lots of great games!

Any team/players to look out for especially?

I may be biased but I think our team (Entourage) is definitely one to look out for. In another league we have been playing well and should make the playoffs. If we keep riding this streak we are on, I think we will do very well in the NACL. We definitely have our eyes set on being crowned NACL champs in season 1. I see some newer teams sign up as well (Next Question and Natty Light Knightz) and this should be a real test to see how they compete in more traditional season format. It is exciting to see new teams try to compete against the best. Anyway, I think we have some of the best teams signed up right now and some more should be signing up soon.

Any greetings for new fans of the league or players coming across a stream or the site for the first time?

Welcome to NHLGamer! They have been doing amazing things for the 6s scene in Europe and I am extremely excited to be working with them on NACL. If everything goes to plan, we should have some fantastic broadcasts and some really great games of NHL being played. I look forward to continuing to help 6s esports grow in North America with NHLGamer!

Keep your eyes wide open, as we'll be bringing you some prime NACL action on our Twitch channel very soon!

Yet again, welcome to NHLGamer, North America.

Your NHLGamer Editor,
@jahajaha93

^{* The $3000 (USD) prize pool is confirmed when NACL Elite has 16+ participating teams.}

Hello All,

NHLGamer has had many requests to provide a league for our fellow North Americans and we are very excited to announce our newest league, the North American Championship League (NACL)! We will be modeling a majority of the NACL after our very successful European Championship League (ECL), which is now in its 8th season. Our main objective with adding the NACL is to be able to attract competitive 6s players from around the world and have them interact all on one site, creating the biggest competitive 6s scene in the world!

We are very excited about this new opportunity and happy to have @Scheckel29 (USA), along with @TheCreasePolice (USA), leading the way for the NACL. They have experience in running other 6s leagues and will bring a wealth of knowledge to NHLGamer, using their experience combined with ours to help the NACL in the right direction.

NHLGamer’s goal for the first season is to provide an Elite and Pro division for the North American players on the Xbox console. The Elite division will have the best NA teams competing for a monetary prize consisting of buy-ins ($200) from the teams, while our Pro division will be a free division, where teams will have the chance to compete for promotion spots to play in the Elite division. There will be promotions and relegations between the two divisions. The sizes of both divisions will be determined by the total amount of teams that sign up.

The NACL Elite prize pool will amount to a total of $3000. NHLGamer will be withholding 8% of each buy-in as a handling fee. This 8% will be used for the development and running of the site directly. The prize pool of $3000 will be divided as follows:*

1. $1,800
2. $800
3-4. $200

NACL will begin its first season on March 11th and registrations kick off effective immediately, so please head over to:

• NACL Elite registrations - Xbox One
• NACL Pro registrations - Xbox One

We are also looking at how much interest there is for a PS4 NACL. Please head to the below link for us to gauge if a PS4 NACL is viable. Thank you!

• NACL registrations - Playstation 4

Last but not least, welcome to the community!

About NHLGamer

NHLGamer.com first saw the light of day over a decade ago, somewhere around 2004. What started out as a website platform for friends to arrange NHL leagues against each other has since grown exponentially into what is today the largest community for NHL gamers in Europe. Currently, the member count of our site is nearing 6000 strong! Since its inception, NHLGamer has continuously strived to offer the best possible experience for any and all gamers who have come to enjoy the competitiveness of playing the EA Sports series of NHL games. We made our biggest stride forward yet when we in late 2015 introduced the first ever European Championship League (ECL) - a league where all the best European NHL gamers create teams and compete against each other in the game mode EASHL (6v6) for the title of Best EASHL Team in Europe.

Our new found venture into the North American NHL gaming scene is looking to follow in the footsteps of what we have done with the ECL. We've learned some important lessons from our success in Europe and feel that now is the time to also expand across the pond. The ECL has taken massive steps forward and now that we have that action plan in place, we will be able to kick off the NACL and improve it step by step in rapid succession.

While proud of our achievements and the success we've had in creating and maintaining such a great community of talented gamers, we are not done yet. Our long-term goals include growing the community, hosting larger leagues with larger prize pools and working together with organizations at the cutting edge of gaming and eSports.

Remember to stay up to speed with all our leagues by following our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

*The calculation is based on a 16 team NACL 1 Elite. NHLGamer withholds the right to alter the ruleset regarding the prize pool if the need should arise to change the size of the NACL 1 Elite division.

Edit: Here's a couple useful links that will answer some of your questions: 

• Link to rules
• NACL Fast Facts

On behalf of NHLGamer,

Kenneth