Mikka

Kiekko-Espoo Esports In @vJokkee- from Dynastia/Finnish Defence Forces @Frilander from Reality Check HC (on May 27th after the roster lock ends) Out @John Phouni Thx to the Phounator for the year he was with us & welcome Jokke & Frii 💙💛 Our ECL 12 Pro roster is now complete.

Spamming too much on here but btw, the captaincy/team ownership issue that some have mentioned... I didn't comment it on earlier because I thought that it's just too hard of an issue to be tackling here, but guess what I've realised Due to this great new qualifier system that we have in place, there is imo zero grounds to keep it in the rules that a captain can change every single player on the roster but himself and keep the spot. I mean now if the new roster is good enough, they'll still get into Pro. I don't think there's ever been a case like that in Elite because of, well, reasons. This would in my opinion just further level the playing field and back the base idea behind the promo/rele reform

Hey now, they suggested that svamp's current team should've been relegated straight to lite after last season without giving them a chance in the qualifier!11!!1!1!! That would've been quite unfortunate wouldn't it 🤠

I don't see changing anything mid-season as a good thing, but I don't see that anything was changed mid-season either. For teams that finished 13-16 in Pro, the only thing that changed compared to the old system was that they get more time to train and improve their roster & morale before having to prove to be worthy of their Pro spots. For the 12th place team, "oh fuck, we have an extra mini-tourney to play before next season to prove that we're still good enough to play in Pro", which obiviously is a bit of an unpleasant surprise but I mean they weren't confirmed to finish 12th when this was announced, so they could've still played better and finished higher to avoid all this. For Lite teams, the only one that lost something is 4th for having to play in the qualifiers, but again they knew about this before their season ended. And 5-8th for not being the first teams promoted in case of an empty Pro spot due to disbanding teams (guess not :D). The remaining Lite & Wildcard teams lost absolutely nothing, but instead gained an opportunity to first of all get promoted even if zero Pro teams would disband, and secondly also the chance to prove their skills instead of the opinion-based system that was previously in use. So in my opinion the changes were not drastic enough that everyone should be losing their minds on when it was announced, yeah it would've been good to announce it before the season but it's not like it was after the season and the ones affected had zero ways to affect their situation. Everyone (well, except the 5 promoted lite teams) was given the chance to prove themselves, even the 15th & 16th that were originally announced to be relegated without qualifiers straight to Lite. Now if people disagree with the whole system, that's another topic that I've also given my comments on earlier. The bolded part and onwards, I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say, unless you're just making your stance clearer on how this should've gone in your opinion? The bolded parts in the final paragraph I'd ask to elaborate but I'm not sure I have the energy & willingness to keep on arguing here, but if you have the time then please do, I want to understand your viewpoint. The seeding I've also commented on earlier, I don't think either that it makes any sense to now suddenly rank Pro teams higher if it was decided before that they should be lower than Lite (unless the thought process is lite top8 > pro bottom 8 > rest of lite in which case I'll agree to disagree with NG on that & ask if these kind of thought processes behind changes could be communicated through the articles in the future).

We can't forget the beloved Hawks Hockey Club ❤️ Gz on the signing tho, nice to see not only more and more orgs but also more and more teams south of Malmö climbing up the ladders, no matter the annoyance over the servers

(1) Oh well then I misintrepreted you so sorry about that, that's just the feeling I got from the first part I bolded in your comment that I quoted. My comment wasn't supposed to be as directed to you as it seems like, just wanted it to be stated aloud that they put a lot of time into this no matter what it looks like. (2) I understand your point here about not changing things midway through a season, although I do disagree. Ideally yeah I'd like to have had all the info be released before the season start, but in my opinion that's not absolutely crucial if we at least know that something is going to be changed and at least vaguely what that something is. Here's a quote from an article titled The ECL 11 rulebook update is here!, posted November 19, 2020 (two days after Lite and a day after Neo had started, before Pro & Elite started): Now, I did bold that section myself, originally it was just an easily missable ending of an article that I wouldn't assume too many were interested in. This should've been emphasized more (at least be bolded or something), but that's an official channel for communication & as I said Kenu even posted related info about this in the chatbox, which while not being an official information channel is one that I think more people might actually read. So in my opinion, this change was communicated to everyone with minimum time and details necessary so that this isn't a farce. It wasn't a perfect or even a good execution, but imo it was enough. I do see though why you and others who have actually been affected by this may think otherwise than someone who wasn't, and I do agree that ideally you'd like all the info to be out before the season start. I do think that at that point maybe NG should've just posted an article that no-one would've understood due to its complexity but had all the info in it, and then come out with the simplified release when that's ready. That way the info would've at least been out there from the get-go. Or relased the basic things first (maybe a bit like Janikka suggested), like how many teams are going to be affected and what's the basic idea behind it, I mean the actual qualifier format is info that wouldn't have had any bearing to anyone at that point in time.

The hypothetical groups you had in a quote are correct using the adjusted seedings being used for ECL 12 qualifiers, but in the original article Pro teams are seeded below the Lite teams and above Core. So I can only assume that the current, adjusted seedings (which I tbh didn't notice b4 ) are only temporary and due to the process of promoting these 5 Lite teams. From the original reform article: So I'd assume this is the system that's going to be used starting from next season with the Core teams coming in and everything. With these seedings, the groups would look like: Just my personal opinion but Group 3 & 4 are the ones I'd want to be in. The groups you posted looked good, so maybe just seeding Pro above Lite would solve the problem. I agree with the bolded part, think it's a bit too late for immediate changes. As for the non-bolded part though: My only association to anything regarding the qualifiers is playing like one tourney/league with like one guy in a few of the teams, but as far as I'm aware there is not a single player in the qualifiers that I keep in touch with regularly. Looking at the people who've liked my first comment, I see a lot of people that don't have their horses in the race either. I also don't see more than a few players per team in there, so I'd say that there's representation from a pretty wide spectrum of teams. Most of the comments here are from people that are directly affected, but hitting a like on a comment is a lot easier to do than spending hours on writing about things that don't even affect oneself (yea it's me I'm the oneself hello). I get how these changes seem drastic and so sudden to most people, but these things are not done over just a few days or weeks. Even from public sources (Kenu's chatbox messages) there was info that there's going to be some changes to the promotion system at least from season start. There was messages about "please hold on, we're trying to make it somewhat digestible", "next week", "soon". The promotion/relegation section in the rulebook was blacked out too and I think there was some kind of a notice about an announcement coming. And we all know how Kenu/NG informs us about things basically only when they're done, so this has been long coming. From what I've heard, NG has felt that there needs to be proper notice given before the season about a big reform like this so that people are not blindsided. That's obiviously not what happened here even if it was the plan and I do agree announcing this mid-season was NG shooting themselves in the foot, but as far as I'm aware this is exactly what NG wanted to avoid but for some reason just wasn't able to. Let's not think this whole reform was half-assedly assembled during a weekend at NG's beautiful sauna headquarters, they've put a lot of time into this. I agree there's still work to be done to make these things more simpliefied and easy to understand, but judging from Kenu's chatbox messages trying to do that as good as possible is what got us into this mess (about the late announcement) in the end That obiviously shouldn't happen but it did, even if it unintentionally, so I guess that's an opportunity for NG for further improvement.

As far as I see, this whole qualifier-thing was created to ensure that the divisions are as tight and competitive as possible, as in so that the best eligible teams will get into Pro((&Lite)). Blindly promoting the best Lite playoff teams from the previous season doesn't in my opinion only cancel out the good elements this system has brought, but actually outweights them and makes this worse than the one we had before. If a team belongs in Pro, they can surely get a top 7 placement in a qualifier consisting of bottom Pro, almost-top Lite (& top Core) and these week old new teams, no? Getting to top 8 in Lite isn't imo enough proof that a team is better than a 12th ranked Pro team. They could be though, and that's why there's these qualifiers where they can prove themselves, isn't that just great I get it you're happy you got a free ride through the quals cuz rules are rules n shit but I'd maybe let the next season do the talking if I were in your position, gz & gl, see you in Pro. Np, although I don't agree with you on this (my comment from yesterday, just let them battle it out imo) Also I'm not sure anything can be done about ECL 12 anymore, just giving improvement suggestions for the future at this point

With how the qualifiers have been seeded, those 5 teams would be the top 5 seeded teams in the qualifiers From the original structure update article: Lite teams being higher seeded than the Pro teams also means that at least I, personally, would in the "real" qualifier format prefer to be the 13th rank in Pro instead of 12th. "Why is that?", you may ask. Well, in the format that's going to be in use starting next season, the only difference to the seedings I posted above is that Pro bottom4 will be directly replaced with top4 of core. --> the 12th and 14th placed Pro teams will be in the same group with each other, meanwhile the 13th place teams will be the lone Pro teams in their groups, as seen below. I haven't had enough sleep to think about how this could be solved or even if I'm the only one thinking like this, but I'll just drop this here. I thought I commented about this on the original article but it appears I didn't, so sorry for the late feedback Also I don't personally get the complaints about how this was announced mid-season, I mean I'd like to think that everyone wants to achieve the highest finish possible no matter what, so I don't see how an earlier heads-up would've solved anything. I do understand that the teams affected might feel upset about getting this unpleasant surprise so late, but be honest if you would've finished higher due to the fear of a relegation battle instead of the hunger to get into the playoffs, you're doing something wrong.

If this means preventing this: then yeah, I agree 10000%. (For example) Pro Group 1 12th place team SSK was 4 points from a playoff spot, and they are going to have to go through qualifiers when PENTA (highest seed eliminated in Lite top16 so 9th I guess) gets to go straight to Pro. I kinda like the idea that even the 12th place team in Pro has to qualify, but imo in the case of extra spots you should just allocate those to the qualifiers so that the best teams play in Pro. Those five that now got instant promotion might just be the top5 teams in the qualifiers and be top5 in Pro next year, hell do I know, but imo they shouldn't take a priority over teams that weren't too far off from Pro playoffs. --> just let everyone prove themselves in the qualifiers, that's the primary idea behind this new system isn't it? If there's extra spots, then great, more (qualifier) teams have the chance to get promoted!

Kiekko-Espoo Esports (ECL Pro) @John Phouni decided to step down, so we're now looking for what's preferably a highly motivated long term prospect defenseman who is active and can play with both handednesses. You'll get plenty of training games and 2-10 ECL games, depending on your performance. You don't need a ton of experience but at least some ECL games would be nice so you're not a total newcomer. If you're finnish-speaking and interested, contact @Hazard-laser and/or @Raikkoneeh here and/or PSN. don't msg me bls

Judging from these, I assume the qualifier is to be played just before the start of next season instead of immediately after the current one has ended like in the old system? So the qualifying teams will have the whole lengthy offseason to train and make personnel changes, so concerns like the one I quoted below should be irrelevant, right?

Really like that teams who could previously survive for multiple seasons in Pro due to the relegation system will now have to battle for their spots (and that the wildcard teams can play their way into pro) max 10 teams promoted/relegated sounds like a lot in a 32 team division but I think it’s going to be really good for the competitiveness of the scene and balancing out the divisions, (almost) no one’s gonna be safe and the best will be on top

Free LW/C/LD/RW/RD for SCL if some1 wants a finn who can only play for like 2 weeks. Can play almost every day 11.9-27.9, most likely unavailable for the rest of the tournament though

Free LW/C/LD for FCL. Not yet 100% sure on availability (military service ) but from what I know I should be able to play for two weeks somewhere around the start of September. Don’t care much about the level, I just want to play some games during my brief vacay I guess RW/RD goes too but don’t expect much.. And yeah, looking for a team (Only for FCL!!!!! -@Raikkoneeh) where I can actually get to play a few games, otherwise I’d just sit on the bench of Almighty HanaaHC Contact on PSN or here

No one can choose the server, for some reason the only way to get a sweeede-server in a north vs central matchup seems to be bootcamping in Lapland (Enigma 👀) or with a one-in-a-million chance like Nordic Stars, —> German teams aren’t able to give up the host even if they’d agree to it. I’m pretty sure most of them would happily let the home team play on their own servers, especially if they could actually pracc against some decent opponents for change

Young hiddengems to watch: @John Phouni

@AcePain_Maker

Looking for a motivated starting RW that can play almost every night & carry us through the first round in future tournaments If you're a finnish-speaking hidden gem with potential (and R2), msg @Hazard-laser here or on PSN!

cama young superstars 😍

@Hazard-laser

PCJP and tuzio changed nationality?

Wow, must be a world record losing 5 games when only conceding 3

HanaaHC Looking for active and motivated starting LD for future tournaments. MSG @Hazard-laser PLS, finnish only cuz jeje's english is so bad thank you

HanaaHC IN HolyFlyer from Mentula SKA 🍹