MartindalexC

Hey Gamers, After community feedback, and internal testing, we have decided to add Warrior to the list of banned traits. This decision is based on the idea that using Warrior leads to situations where players are unfairly given an advantage, for example where a player is hit and recovers faster than the player who made the hit. Additionally, there is the possible meta interaction to consider where banning Truculence, but leaving Warrior available could, and from observation of recent games has, lead to a large increase in Warrior use due to it not having a natural 'counter' available to players – tilting the scales in favour of forwards vs. defenders. As stated previously, we have been monitoring the community discussion and while there is an active ongoing discussion about the banning of other traits, especially Sponge, at this time we have only received concrete evidence of Warrior exhibiting game-altering behaviour, and as such we have elected to not include any additional traits in this latest ban update. Our intention by implementing this change before the start of the ECL pre-season is to provide teams with as stable a base as possible in their ongoing preparations for the upcoming ECL ’26: Winter season. As far as other traits go, we will of course continue to examine community feedback, as well as gameplay balance, and revisit if need be, but at present the evidence in front of us leads us to believe that no other remaining unbanned traits are in the game altering position that Warriors holds. ECL ’26: Winter Restrictions After extensive discussion and testing, the League Administration has decided to continue restricting several player Abilities and Builds that were found to have a disproportionate impact on gameplay. The following restrictions apply across all ECL divisions for the ECL ’26: Winter season. 🛑 Banned Abilities All tiers (Gold, Blue, and Red) of the following abilities are banned: Big Rig Big Tipper Elite Edges Hipster No Contest Pressure+ Spark Plug Truculence Unstoppable Warrior Wheels These abilities have shown to create unbalanced or unintended gameplay advantages, reducing the importance of player skill and positioning. Specifically, as a category, we have wanted to slow down the gameplay by prohibiting abilities that add significant speed boosts. The bans help ensure that all players compete on an even playing field, where awareness and execution matter most. ⚔️ Position-Based Build Restrictions To further preserve role balance and gameplay authenticity: Forwards cannot use defensive classes: Defensive Defender, Enforcer Defender, Offensive Defender, Two-Way Defender, Puck Moving Defender Defenders cannot use forward classes: Dangler, Enforcer, Grinder, Playmaker, Power Forward, Sniper, Two-Way Forward Additionally, skaters and goalies cannot use special characters or custom character builds. 🧾 Enforcement Violations of the above bans will be handled as follows: 1st Infraction – Team captain warning + player suspended for 2 games + potential WO loss* 2nd Infraction – Second captain warning + full lineup warning + player suspended for 4 games + potential WO loss* 3rd Infraction – Captain suspended for 2 games + player suspended for 4 games + 2-point deduction + potential WO loss* *A Walkover (WO) loss will only apply if the offending team was clearly informed and continued to use banned Abilities or Builds afterward. Clear video evidence is required when reporting violations. You can view the full ECL '26: Winter - Official Rules here. Looking Forward While the overall ability structure remains similar to previous seasons, the addition of position-based build restrictions represents another step toward a stronger global standard. As always, we’ll continue to monitor gameplay trends and community feedback throughout the Winter season and forward your feedback directly to EA SPORTS. Thank you once again for your ongoing passion and input — it’s what continues to drive the ECL forward. Best regards, League Administration

Around three weeks ago LA received a report that @Keuschemisch was adding additional points to game reports that were not present in-game. After investigation, here are the findings: In order to carry out the investigation we cross-referenced SportsGamer match results with EA API metadata from seven tournaments stretching across two EA NHL titles. By comparing what we have on record vs. what EA says happened we can see if the stats line up. For instance, in the screenshot below we can see what it looks like when the stats between the two sources line up. All of the players listed have the same number of goals and assists on both the EA API, as well as what has been reported on the SportsGamer site after the games were finished. Generally speaking, people seem to be doing a pretty good job at maintaining the balance between accuracy and speed at which the reports are completed – so to the captains of the SportsGamer community, good work! That said, mistakes do happen and there are times when an extra assist gets added to one player that should have gone to someone else, however as shown in the screenshot below Keuschemisch is a major outlier. No other player across the seven tournaments worth of data is even close. To make matters worse, those 25 points came over the course of only four of those said seven tournaments. For completeness here is the list of players who have had points deducted by accident over those same seven tournaments. Furthermore, as seen in the overview below, a number of Keuschmisch’s additional points come by way of assists being granted when the EA API does not note one being recorded. In order for this to occur when reporting, the individual must edit the EA readout at the bottom of the page before then going back up to the dropdown box to select their name as one of the assisters on a goal. This means that it changes from a potential ‘misclick’ to a two-step process as seen below. Finally, when a game report is completed, it saves the username of the individual who did it, and in these games Keuschemisch was the user who completed the game reports. Therefore, we believe with the evidence listed above that the increase in stats seen on Keuschemisch is not by chance or an error and is in fact a conscious effort to boost their point totals artificially. Keuschemisch claims that the reason for this stats increase is a box score glitch. It is worth noting, that we have also seen video evidence of games where the alleged assists have taken place and been able to confirm that the player in question was nowhere near to getting an assist. Due to the scale of the stats manipulation across multiple tournaments and EA NHL titles, we have decided to suspend Keuschemisch from all SportsGamer tournaments from today’s date (10/01/2025) up to and including 28/02/2026, furthermore, Keuschemisch will receive a captaincy suspension that will run from today’s date (10/01/2025) up to and including 10/01/2030. Finally, for full disclosure, LA received the original report regarding this on the 20th of December 2024. To facilitate this investigation we had to create from scratch a tool to ingest and transform the data from EA’s API into a viewable account of all games from any tournament played on the SportsGamer platform, which we will now be using going forward to proactively scan for players manipulating statistics in a competitive environment. (Update: It should also be noted that from this investigation and the evidence gathered, LA is confident in saying that captains @Toneee9, and @Timasy were not aware of the stats manipulation that was going on, and as such should not face any public (or private) backlash.) League Administration

It has come to our attention that teams are attempting to make transfers beyond the first stage of the qualifiers, as such we would like to issue a clarification of the rules regarding transfers during the qualifiers - to issue this we will be using rule 7.2. “League Administration can add further clarification to existing rules if deemed necessary. If League Administration is required to process a case that is not covered by any of the existing rules, it can add new rules throughout a league/tournament to cover these scenarios. Once a decision has been made by LA, they must supply both parties involved in the case with an explanation showing how they came to their decision, as well what rules were invoked.” Ultimately, the reason why the regular season (and by extension the playoffs) have a transfer deadline is to stop teams progressing to the playoffs, then cannibalising another team to load up and bolster their chances of going on an extended playoff run. It’s unfair to other teams that finalised their roster well in advance, and so we have had a transfer deadline for as long as tournaments have been run here. Qualifiers are relatively new and as a quirk of them being categorised as part of the season (and regular season at that), they haven’t had a clearly communicated transfer deadline – until now. Going forward, teams will only be able to make player acquisitions in stage 1 of the qualifiers (with the usual transfer restrictions remaining in place), meaning that a team may bring players in early-on to boost their chances, but once they progress to the next stage – whether that be a secondary group stage (see: Pro Qualifiers going on at the moment), or an outright playoff style series (see: Elite qualifiers) – they will no longer be able to add players. This clarification maintains the competitive integrity of the qualifiers and we believe that the vast majority of teams have been sticking to it unofficially, we just wanted to codify it and make sure that the structure of the qualifiers cannot be gamed or abused in this way.