Summer Cup - Playoffs and other info

Evening NHLGamers,

As you are no doubt aware of, the ECL Summer Cup regular season came to an end tonight. Having been delayed a bit and getting some of the wind taken out of its' sails by the NHL 17 Beta Week, the Summer Cup nonetheless marches on.

Here are the final standings for the two groups;

Standings
Group 1: (One result wrongly reported, but these are the correct standings)
1. Mighty 8 Balls, 26 points
2. Hupimunat, 22 points (tiebreaker over Team Juizki, more goals scored)
3. Team Juizki, 22 points
4. Team Pelimies80, 19 points (tiebreaker over Ullas Pojkar, 7 wins to 6)
5. Ullas Pojkar, 19 points
6. Los Dominos, 15 points
7. Team Billy44205, 3 points

Group 2: 
1. Mirage, 21 points (tiebreaker over Club Kannunkulma, 7 wins to 6)
2. Club Kannunkulma, 21 points
3. Royal Warriors, 19 points
4. TEAM PELTIKII, 18 points (tiebreaker over Everyday Im Byfuglien, 7 wins to 6)
5. Everyday Im Byfuglien, 18 points
6. Latvian Army For Hire, 16 points
7. Thats the Spirit, 13 points
 

Playoffs
The playoffs will look a bit different from the past ECL tournaments, this being the Summer Cup and all. There is only about a month left until NHL 17 is released which means we need to up the tempo a bit on the playoffs (as the extended Beta delayed the tournament by about a week). This means the playoffs will start TOMORROW (17/8-2016) and work as BEST OF 3-series until the Finals where - time permitting - the final two teams will play a best of 7 to determine the ultimate Summer Cup champion. This means a whole playoff series (3 games at the max) can be played in one night, something that should help with scheduling as the summer winds down and people start to head back into the "real world" = jobs/school/etc. We have calculated roughly 5 days per playoff round for the quarter- and semi finals but if they are completed sooner than that, we will of course accelerate the start of the next round.

So, the Summer Cup playoff pairings will look like this:

Mighty 8 Balls vs. TEAM PELTIKII
Hupimunat vs. Royal Warriors
Team Juizki vs. Club Kannunkulma
Team pelimies80 vs. Mirage

The Summer Cup has, in the eyes of the staff, been a great success and a fun opportunity to get to know some new people in the community! So, we'd like to acknowledge and thank all of you who have participated so far, with a special thank you going to the captains for making this as smooth a ride as possible. Of course, not everything can be smooth sailing always and alas we had some games that had to be settled by walkover.


Walkovers
In this case, Team Billy44205 was forced (due to inability to get enough skaters to complete matches) to submit walkover wins to two teams, as follows;

Team Billy44205 vs. Team Pelimies80 0-5
Team Billy44205 vs. Team Juizki 0-5
Team Pelimies80 vs. Team Billy44205 5-0
Team Juizki vs. Team Billy44205 5-0

Billy, the captain, has handled the situation as well as can be expected and has communicated to the staff his efforts to set up games. No further discipline will be excercised in this matter.


Point deductions
The staff were presented with a number of cases where exceptions and/or trouble and miscommunication arose in regards to the "3-game rule". These matters were in regards to about five different teams. The staff has decided not to give these teams point deductions for two reasons (with #1 being the primary reason);

1. In every case the captains were able to show (through batches of print screens and messages) that they, in fact, tried above and beyond the call of duty to get all players involved in atleast 3 games. This is something we knew could happen when the tournament started but again, the majority of teams were able to comply with the 3-game rule and the teams that weren't, didn't end up in that situation for a lack of trying. This is important to emphasize because it was what formed the basis of our ruling.

2. In the individual cases where team point deductions were considered, all of the teams were out of the playoffs as far as the final standings go. Making point deductions would not have changed the playoff picture. 


Individual discipline
Just because the teams weren't handed any point deductions doesn't mean there won't be any discipline doled out during this tournament. The Staff has, as indicated above, been handed a number of cases by the captains where individual players put their teams in tough situations and sometimes even acted immature and difficult. Each individual case will be reviewed further by the staff and communicated to the players affected after the end of the tournament. If you are one of the players who for some reason didn't complete 3 games for your team, fear not. It is not the intention of the staff to mindlessly throw punishments about, especially in cases where real-life circumstances were a factor. However, inappropriate behaviour will not be tolerated and as such, discipline will be imposed after the individual reviews are completed.


Questions
If you have any questions, feel free to fire away in the comment section! Being curious is a good thing.


On behalf of the NHLGamer Staff and also, "later skaters",

The_Alpha_Furyan