Welcome Luleå Hockey to NHL esports!

NHLGamers,

Another day, another story! It is with great pleasure we continue welcoming new professional sports organisations into our growing community. This time we have the honour of announcing that the roster of Northern Ascendancy will from now on be representing Luleå Hockey. The team is a combination of the former Northern Stars and Northern Ascendancy, where a multinational core of players combine talent, skill and experience for a lethal force on the ice.

"It's an interesting initiative to grow the sport and increase interest in the youth community and that's why we've decided to venture into NHL esports. We're going into this with an open mind and have now acquired a roster that will represent Luleå Hockey going forward." - Stefan Enbom, CEO of Luleå Hockey

"Playing under the Luleå banner generated a great amount of interest and we're very happy with our decision to recruit the guys we have for our team. It's a group of experienced players who have played together for several years and have top 4 finishes in both the ECL and SCL under their belt. We're moving fast in traditional hockey and we aim to do the same in esports. ECL Elite starts this week and our team takes on the challenge of competing for the best European team in hockey esports." - Andreas @AntzLhf Joanson, Sporting director at Luleå Hockey

For some comments about the team, we caught up with skilled defenseman and assistant captain Hampus @The_Alpha_Furyan Duvefelt:

What was it with Luleå Hockey that made you want to sign with them?

Well, first of all it’s a classic Swedish hockey team. Luleå might not have 100+ years of history, but in the 42 years they’ve been around they’ve played in the top Swedish league for most of that time. What made us keen to represent Luleå though was their incredible enthusiasm when it came to the world of NHL esports. Not to mention their exciting vision for the future. Having someone like Andreas @AntzLhf – who is familiar with EASHL and NHLGamer – leading this venture on Luleås part gave us a lot of trust that they would “get it right”, which was important to us. We had a few other offers, but Andreas consistently made sure to let us know the clubs plans moving forward and how much they specifically wanted to bring us onboard and in the end, that was one of the deciding factors.

What will set Luleå apart from the competition going forward?

Off-ice, I think the dedication and commitment from Luleå Hockey to developing their esports section will be as good as any organization in the NHLGamer scene. We feel confident we will have everything we need to be able to perform our best in EASHL competition. On-ice, we’ll continue to rely on our usual quick offense and creative passing game we’ve been using for the past couple of tournaments. When its off its off… but when it’s on, it can hopefully wreak some have havoc for our opponents.

What are your thoughts in general on several traditional hockey organisations recruiting esports rosters? What do you see as the potential benefits?

Well, I know I speak for everyone when I say its an amazing and inspiring thing. To actually put pen on paper and sign a contract to play the game you’ve played for years and years, since you were a kid, just feels tremendous. Unreal, almost. The benefits for the scene are hard to put into words. It means everything to have esports organizations like HAVU and sports organizations like DEG, ZSC Lions, Växjö Lakers, Färjestad BK and now Luleå Hockey join our community and show that faith in us that this can continue to grow and evolve. For the teams themselves, it's probably exciting to open up a new way of communicating with fans and to perhaps one day play in a league against each other – capitalizing on the already existing rivalries. For example, we look forward to playing Färjestad where you’ll have both the rivalry of Northern Ascendancy vs. Bucketeers, but also Luleå vs. Färjestad.

NHLGamer extends a warm thank you to Hampus and wishes good luck in their debut season wearing the Luleå colors.

Follow Luleå Hockey Esport on their Twitter and Twitch channels for all the updates you might want on the team!

Luleå Hockey

Luleå Hockey hails from the city of Luleå in Northern Sweden. Having been founded in 1977 makes the club rather young, but despite that they have had some success in the form of one national championship, one European Trophy and their most recent trophy - a CHL victory in 2015. Luleå Hockey has been the incubator for highlight reel talent like Linus Omark and journeyman goaltender Anders Nilsson to name a few.