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Hey NHL Gamers, What a great start to the season it has been! Almost all the registered teams are active and playing and we’ve had well over 300 games reported already. This is without a doubt our biggest, most intense tournament yet. Sadly, no tournament is perfect and we’ve already had a few disciplinary cases. In the interest of transparency, here are our rulings on the matters we’ve dealt with so far. On the matter of the only team yet to participate in the tournament, Ice K1ngs - As the staff has not received any form of communication from the Ice K1ngs team and they have not played any games or responded to requests for games – they are hereby to be considered disqualified from ECL 3. This means the tournament now have 58 teams – 29 for each group. On the matter of incorrect arena configuration for Warriors of Kongo vs. HC Checkmate (Scheduled for October 13th) The staff was made aware by representatives of HC Checkmate that they experienced visual impairment during their away game vs. Warriors of Kongo. Kongo had not removed their home arena ”intro gate” which is currently something that is causing difficulties seeing part of the defensive zone for the opposing team from certain visual settings, like ”Classic” for example. Rule #7 of the NHLGamer rulebook stats that: ”The home team is responsible for making sure that no intro ceremony gates or other unlockable rooftop elements are blocking the away team's camera view. We recommend to turn off any of these items completely. If the away team can prove blocked sight in form of screenshots or video, the home team will receive an automatic walkover loss for said game.” Warriors of Kongo did not comply with this rule, as it was written in the rulebook. HC Checkmate made the decision to quit the game at the score of 2-2, as soon as they noticed the visual impairment. After collecting information from HC Checkmate (in the form of pictures of the intro gate) the staff have come to the following conclusions: - - The amount of visual impairment in this case is minor, less so then expected by the staff when writing this rule. Therefore, it will be modified. It is important to note however, that these intro gates and other ”start of the game”-presentations that are then hung from the rafters has no place in the ECL and we remind all teams yet again to REMOVE all of these arena settings. - - Warriors of Kongo showed negligence in not being aware of this new addition to the rulebook. - - HC Checkmate made the right decision to quit the game. The staff rules that Warriors of Kongo are to be considered warned. Any further indication of an intro gate being used by Kongo will result in more severe punishment (walkover losses) and repeated offenses are grounds for a tournament ban. Furthermore, the ruling is that the game in question will have to be played again, from scratch, starting at a score of 0-0. The staff applauds HC Checkmate for following the staff suggestion of replaying the game instead of demanding a WO. As mentioned above, the rule will be modified to reflect the actual effect the intro gate has on the game. It does impair the vision and is a distraction for the opposing team, but not neccessarily to the degree that immediate walkover losses are a reasonable consequence. Therefore, the modified rule will most likely feature some form of wording that gives the exposed team (the team that experiences the visual impairment) a right to replay the game from scratch if communicated immediately when the obstruction is noticed. On the matter of incorrect roster for Falun Coal Miners in the games vs. Elämäm Kiekko (Scheduled for October 13th) It was brought to the staffs attention by the captain of Elämäm Kiekko that, when trying to report the teams completed games against Falun Coal Miners, some of that teams players who participated in the game were missing from the official website roster. Therefore, Elämäm were unable to report the games. Rule #5 of the NHLGamer rulebook states that ”Teams are only allowed to use players listed in their roster on NHLGamer.com”. Falun did not comply with this rule, as it was intended in the rulebook. When asked about the situation, the Coal Miner captain stated that it was his belief that the rule in question was referring to the roster listed in the ECL Roster Registration thread and that, since both players missing from the intended game report was indeed listed on the registration roster since September, the team was in full compliance with the rules. The players in question were both on the official website roster within 24 hours of the games. After collecting information from both teams (the images provided by Elämäm combined with statements from Falun representatives) the staff have come to the following conclusions: - - The rule was always intended to refer to the Official website roster (wherein the players accept invites to their teams from the captains) and not the registration roster. The rule isn’t as clearly worded as it could be and does invite a certain confusion about which roster is referred to. This is something that will be corrected on our side moving forward, with this case serving as the catalyst for the change. - - It is the judgement of the staff that the captain of the Coal Miners acted without ill intent and did not seek to gain any advantages to his team by not having the players on the official website roster on time. Nevertheless, he is to be considered neglient for not applying ”common sense” and having his teams players on the reportable roster on time. - - The situation that occured did not have any effect on the outcome of the teams actual games Therefore, the staff rules that the results of both games will stand (the teams are now free to upload their stats) but the captain of the Falun Coal Miners – The_Alpha_Furyan – will receive an individual punishment for neglient behaviour in regards to rule #5. This punishment will consist of a 1-game suspension wherein the captain is forced to miss his teams next game during the regular season. Furthermore, the rule in question will be re-written to more emphatically state that the roster intended in Rule #5 is indeed the official website roster to avoid any confusion. On the matter of Ice Bros not showing up for the games vs. Nordic Nosebleed (Scheduled for October 19th) The staff was contacted by the captain of Nordic Nosebleed who reported that Ice Bros had not shown up at all for their scheduled games. These games had been scheduled and confirmed by both teams. Rule #6 of the NHLGamer rulebook states that: ”If a team is more than 15 minutes late to a game, the opposing team has the right to request a walk-over win. These requests will be looked at by the NHL Gamer staff.” After being provided with screenshots of the conversation between the two teams, the staff has come to the following conclusions: - - Ice Bros did not provide any explanation for not showing up at all. If a teammate has some form of real life situation to deal with, the team is expected to have a back-up ready to step in. This is part of the reason all teams are required to have atleast 8 members. - - Ice Bros did not communicate that they would not be able to participate until less than an hour before the scheduled puck drop. Therefore, the staff rules that Nordic Nosebleed are to be given two automatic walkover wins for the games scheduled, just as Ice Bros will receive two walkover losses. On the matter of X Factor showing up late for the games vs. Origins (Scheduled for October 19th) The staff was made aware by both teams that an issue arose between X Factor and Origins when they were scheduled to play their games at 21.00 on October 19th. One player from X Factor was late and arrived at around 21.14 – 21.17 (timestamps vary in the respective teams versions of the events). Origins at this point decided to only play the second game of the two games planned and request a walkover win for the first. Rule #6 of the NHLGamer rulebook (as mentioned earlier) states that: ”If a team is more than 15 minutes late to a game, the opposing team has the right to request a walk-over win. These requests will be looked at by the NHL Gamer staff.” After several in-depth conversations with both teams and a myriad of screenshots and video evidence from both teams, the staff has come to the following conclusions. - - X Factor were late. Just because the rulebook states that there is a 15 minute grace period, does not means that teams should routinely use this to be 1-15 minutes late and not apologize to the other team. The appointed game time is the start time, anything after that is late. - - Origins were within their rights to request a walkover win, per the rules. - - X Factor did provide a reasonable explanation for their late player and did contact Origins to ask them for an additional 5 minutes to the 15 minute grace period as they knew their player could make that time. The player did show up in that 5-minute window. - - The second game scheduled was played on that same night, meaning both teams were available for a period of time that evening. The staff rules as follows: X Factor are given a warning and are to be considered on probabtion. If the team shows up late again during the tournament, the opposing team (if requested) will be given a walkover win, without exceptions. We will re-iterate what was said in the case of Ice Bros vs. Nordic Noseblees; ”if a teammate has some form of real life situation to deal with, the team is expected to have a back-up ready to step in. This is part of the reason all teams are required to have atleast 8 members.”. X Factor should have had additional players ready. That said, the game will not be ruled a walkover loss to X Factor as this was an extremely marginal case where both sides made their case through video and images that both differed by mere minutes. The first game between Origins and X Factor will be played and is to be scheduled as soon as possible between the teams respective captains. To summarize, X Factor showed poor sportsmanship by being late and Origins could have shown better sportsmanship by allowing the X Factor player the additional 5 minute grace. They were however, as stated, within their rights to request a walkover win. This will not be the case this time but as mentioned: a punishment for X Factor is doled out for being late. Summary If there is a common thread running through these rulings it is that we want the games to be decided on the ice as much as possible. The rules are extensive and do provide the backbone and structure for this entire tournament but they are not perfect or infallible. Therefore, the staff reviews each case individually – taking several long hours out of us that we would like to focus on improving the site for you guys. An additional individual warning is handed out to pulverapa, captain of HC Solhem. By continuously, and deliberately, misreporting the ”3 stars” function – you are creating a situation where these games arent being ”saved” correctly in the NHLGamer database. Refrain from doing this in the future or further discipline will be considered. Additional Info - Game Reports Finally, the following games need to be reported immediately as they are well outside of the 24-hour reporting rule. Continued neglience will result in warnings and/or possible bans. (Alliance HT) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1632 (October 19th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1633 (October 19th) (Bone Breakers) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1622 (October 19th) (HC Marilyn) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1389 (October 10th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1646 (October 19th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1647 (October 19th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1675 (October 20th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1676 (October 20th) (HC Soittorasia) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1409 (October 10th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1524 (October 13th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1528 (October 13th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1667 (October 20th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1668 (October 20th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1678 (October 20th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1680 (October 20th) (HC Checkmate) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1491 (October 12th) (Infinity) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1670 (October 20th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1672 (October 20th) (Los Bombers) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1534 (October 14th) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1535 (October 14th) (Rising Phantoms HC) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1594 (October 18th) (Vodoo People) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1667 (October 20th) (VC Hockey) http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1598 (October 18th) Thank you for your time. Sincerely, The NHLGamer Staff

Exciting news NHL Gamers! The release of NHL 17 is less than a week away and some of us are of course already enjoying the 10 hour trial on the Xbox One with EA Access. One might think EA is relaxing at this stage, but we're happy to tell you that there is a major update coming "very soon" - just in time for the release. @EASportsNHL tweeted earlier today: The list of improvements is impressive - in fact, it's the longest one I can remember for a patch for an NHL-game. Of course it's very specific and goes into detail about certain team specific textures, but nevertheless EA Sports seems to be working hard to prove that they do in fact care about this title. There is an overwhelming amount of improvements listed, but one of our favourites is one that our very own community has been asking for and is something that @gzell60 discussed with producer Clement Kwong during our interview at Gamescom a few weeks ago: Allow for a human controlled goalies to play as the extra attacker in EASHL games. There it is! This will certainly make pulling the goalie - both in a delayed penalty situation, and in the last minute - a more valuable asset in the EASHL and the NHL Gamer ECL-leagues. It's time for the goalies to do some shooting practice too. Another added feature that I find really interesting and welcome is the ability to adjust the amount of help you get with your passing online: Added “Online Pass Assist Percentage” slider to the controls screen. According to the description, the assist is at 100% by default, but you can turn it completely off. This is comparable with the manual passing you can find in the FIFA-series. It may finally be time to stop yelling "That's not where I aimed my pass!" - ok, maybe I did. You can find the full and impressive list of updates below. Please let us know which improvements are the most pleasing to your eye in the comments section below! Source: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/10356843.page?sf48667017=1#35169115 On behalf of the NHL Gamer staff,

Hey NHL Gamers, You might have noticed that our website was unavailable for a few days. As an administrator of a website even an unexpected downtime of a few minutes is one of the worst feelings in the world - let alone when it goes on for days. We've had our technical hick-ups here and there during the development of the site and a lot of the time we've been responsible for messing things up. This time around that wasn't the case and we could only watch things unfold in the passenger seat. We're still waiting for a detailed report from our internet service provider (ISP) on what went wrong. What we do know, is that something went wrong with their scheduled maintenance work of their servers, which caused them to need to move all of their different servers' data over to new hard drives and reroute the traffic. The maintenance work was done in order to increase the capacity and bandwidth of their servers. While we're not happy about the downtime, we know the people over at our ISP worked as hard as they could to get the systems up and running again and thank them for their efforts. We are looking at our options going forward, in order to avoid similar situations in the future. I would like to thank everyone for their patience during the downtime and welcome you back to NHLGamer.com. Please post any problems you might find over in this thread: Also, if you're playing in the Summer Cup, please check the below post: On behalf of the NHL Gamer staff,

Exciting news NHL Gamers! We've got plenty of NHL 17 beta codes to give away to you guys and gals! We'd love for you to follow us on our social media channels: https://www.facebook.com/NHLGamer/ https://twitter.com/NHLGamerCOM http://twitch.tv/NHLGamerTwitch We will be live streaming on Twitch (feed below) and sharing codes on all of these platforms for the next couple of hours. Please join in and take part in the fun! We've been sharing some codes on Facebook before and here's a few to get things going again: PS4: - HNA8-88NG-PK2F - PDBC-CLN4-D45H - N4MK-KHNR-TJCT - 7T5C-4TNH-FMDQ -73HR-G3ND-Q4TR Xbox One: VXJ6G-CF73R-6V6VG-947DD-PQFMZ 43HJT-KF4Y7-2JHQJ-H37Q6-KRHYZ 4HTHM-PYXJY-X4JJR-QRT96-HJ6GZ JG6Y6-7GDWX-22TF9-9YYP9-GMGVZ HM3WQ-T4KWK-9XCHG-J6D42-636TZ Please let us know in the comments when you've used a code! Watch live video from NHLGamerTwitch on www.twitch.tv Hope to see you on the ice!

Exciting news NHL Gamers! The NHL 17 Beta codes have (at least partially) been sent out now and players around the world are downloading the beta as we speak! If you haven't received your code yet - despite applying for it - don't worry. It seems that those that are subscribing to the NHL Insider newsletter got it first. The rest will probably get it on Thursday the 28th, as announced earlier. We are currently waiting for the beta to download, but according to the information in the email, the modes featured in the beta are "Online Versus, EA SPORTS Hockey League, Creation Zone, and Hockey Ultimate Team™". Below is an image of what the email looks like for a PS4 user that gets a beta code. Good news - they are supplying you with two codes for your friends as well! If you didn't sign up on time for the beta (you could do it here, but it says it's closed for now), you should get in touch with your buddies and ask them if they can share a code with you. The beta size on the Xbox One is 17,93 GB and it's roughly the same on PS4. So let's all lace up those skates - I'll see you on the ice!

Hey NHL Gamers, The NHL 17 news keep coming out faster than you can say tic-tac-toe and today we're being served with an interesting piece on the new and improved Hockey Ultimate Team! You can view the trailer below: I think we can all agree that the trailer is cool, but so is the batch of information released alongside it. Loaded with new features, such as HUT Synergy, Dynamic Sets, Trading Posts and other cool improvements, the improved HUT seems like a very welcoming experience for both new and experienced players. Based on the footage we have so far, the new menus and the appearance of the cards themselves are a very welcomed improvement - superficial or not, it looks amazing! The below info is from the official website: Source: https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2016/nhl-17-gameplay-series-hut

Hey Everyone and thank you on my and the staff's behalf for joining our draft stream last night in such great numbers! We have now randomized the groups using the same algorithm as in the first two ECL seasons and the groups are now done and official: Group 1:Team Billy44205Team DieCutterMCTeam juha96Team JuizkiTeam mir021kTeam pelimies80Team selänne8Group 2:Team Basstian23Team debi_85Team FINSeReTeam LastMandalorianTeam PatzlafTeam Tuukka.RTeam vSilenttio The schedule has also now been created and posted. You can find it here: http://nhlgamer.com/schedule.php?leagueID=16. As announced earlier in the rules, four games (two opponents) are expected to be played during each game week. We have scheduled them for Monday and Wednesday, but those days are there just for scheduling purposes and teams may agree to play any day they want (within the rules). We have left the week of the NHL 17 Beta without games and the last week of games is scheduled on the 8th of August. That being said, the teams can decide to play at a quicker pace and if all teams do that, we can start the playoffs earlier. On behalf of the NHL Gamer staff,