Janikka

NHL is pretty much the only game I play on consoles. I will determine my decision solely by which console the NHLGamer scene moves to. I'm hoping it'll be the Xbox, but I bet it will be the PS5 since Europe has always favored the PlayStation over the Xbox. My experience on the PS3 was already considerably worse than on the Xbox 360. I've never owned an Xbox One (seeing as how competitive NHL was always mainly on the PS4 during this generation), but PSN overall has remained far worse compared to Xbox Live back then. Also, I vastly prefer the Xbox One controller over the DS4, although the latter is admittedly a big improvement over the absolutely terrible DS3. I have a couple of Xbox One controllers for PC use just because they suit my hands really well. I don't really care about which console will be more powerful as that is so inconsequential with regard to NHL. Cross-platform play for NHL would be the dream because then I could just get the next Xbox and not even have to consider the PS5.

I think it is impossible to determine some ultimate truth about a top 3, so all we can ever have are subjective opinions. There are too many variables. Opinions are fun, though, so it's okay.

Fun idea!

I was hoping we'd still get to play for something in NHL 20. Thanks, gang!

Children of Ice @PSchibra didn't want to speak Latvian to himself so we salvaged @xLVxRitchey from the rubble of SSG. We are planning no further signings. Here, then, is our full roster at this point: JohtajaTheGreat (center and Dear Leader) nikmes7 (winger) Pikkardz (winger) JParola (all-rounder) PSChibra (all-rounder) Janikka- (defender) xLVxRitchey (defender) Bloodymess_666 (goalie)

Children of Ice In: @PSchibra Out: @Nagyttaja Straight from the Latvian streets, PSchibra returns to the team from a little break. Welcome back! 😍 On behalf of the entire Children of Ice organization, I would like to thank the gifted young man Nagyttaja for everything he did for us and wish him success in the future and good times for the remainder of his service with the Finnish Defence Forces.

Regardless of this debate, I feel like there is huge untapped potential in the Swedish pool of console hockey fans. It would be healthy for the competition at the top to expand. We have some fantastic Swedish players as it is, but the elite playership is more Finn-heavy than I imagine it would be if we got more Swedes to notice the competitive scene. I know hockey is up against football in Sweden and football is more popular, but I'm not sure the current situation is an accurate reflection of the ratio between Swedish and Finnish virtual hockey players. I don't have the numbers to back up this hunch, though. Maybe I'm wrong and playing these games is truly an overwhelmingly Finnish phenomenon. I have no idea which way the high number of Finns in the eSHL will take the league's popularity in Sweden. @keranee said that around 70% of players in the league are still Swedish. That doesn't sound too bad.

The influx of Finnish players was a given at the outset where, based on the description in the original announcement, this league will apparently have the most professional setting we've seen yet in competitive EASHL. Many players will naturally be drawn to that. I imagine SHL at the very least had a say in the rules for this league? I suppose they didn't request a restriction on the number of non-Swedish players.

Great work, guys! Seems like a leap in the professional direction. How will this affect the future of ECL, I wonder?

Group 2 has two black horses. There's Black Horse, and then there's Kaupallinen Yhteistyo.

What about lag?

Teamless yet again. LD/RD. Update: nevermind. Not looking for a team anymore.

I like the latest tuner better than the beta one. The beta tuner has more randomness. I hope whatever middle ground they may find with a new tuner, it's going to be closer to the current latest one than the beta.

You're 6 games into the season already and I was looking at starting from scratch, as a backup against someone who secured the LD position while I was away from the regular games. Meanwhile, your RD spot is not up for grabs. But this is hardly the thread to debate the topic...

Rusty Blades saw a bunch of changes and I ended up an odd man out, so I'm looking for a team where I might have a chance to play or to at least compete for a starter's position. I play defense. ECL Lite is not an option.

Welcome back.

Everyone had better watch out for @pentsaa AKA "persereikä-Pena". He sure knows how to play. With a pretty potential offense and the brothers on defense, I think FCM are going to put up a show in the offensive zone. Meanwhile, we'll see if they've learned to tighten up their defensive play.

I saw an NHL 19 video from gzell60 which demonstrated a hockey stick going through an opponent's leg during a poke check. Last night, as I was playing EASHL as goalie, I had a puck rammed through my stick and into the net. I reviewed the replay multiple times, and sure enough: the puck found its way through my stick, a supposedly solid object in the context of the video game. But what if we, the players, have it all wrong? A few years ago, EA hired a physicist to help out with their puck physics for NHL 15. A Google search revealed the man to be one Michele Petteni. I don't know about you guys, but he seems qualified enough to me. It's probably safe to assume he knew what he was doing. I found no evidence that he's still part of the NHL team, however. In fact, it seems as though NHL 15 was both his video game debut and swan song. Maybe he didn't find the work rewarding enough. Maybe he felt as cheated and disappointed as the rest of us did when we found out NHL 15 was to omit a lot of the goodies such as EASHL. I mean, who would want to do all those calculations for nothing but HUT and a drop-in mode tacked on as damage control? Whatever the case, I would assume his work, or at least some of it, from that time has carried all the way over to NHL 19. What prevents an object from passing through another? You'd have to be pretty dense not to know the answer to that one. Density is a measure of the mass of an object relative to its volume. So if an object is small but has high mass, said object is very dense. When two objects meet that are both adequately dense, they will be unable to pass through each other. The air that we breathe is pretty sparse. We are able to cut through it because our bodies are far denser than air. Air is still dense enough to offer us some resistance, of course, which is one of the things hindering our ability to move fast. In real hockey you won't see sticks going through legs, or pucks penetrating goalies' sticks. All of those objects are too dense for that to happen. But as we've seen, it's not impossible in NHL 19. What if it's all by design? There's been plenty of talk on EA's NHL forums about incidental contact. The developers have written that they've tested full-fledged incidental contact and it didn't work too well. It bogged the game down rather than helped it, and the game got less fun. Now, you would assume that to not apply to such instances as on gzell's video or in my EASHL game last night. But I have a theory. No, a hypothesis. EA may be ahead of the curve. Maybe they're not only thinking outside the box, but they've taken the box and they've thrown it away. Because when you watch that stick go through that leg, or that puck vanish into that stick only to come out from the other end, one thing feels certain: there truly is no box. Or maybe Michele Petteni, bless his heart, was informed his services would not be needed beyond NHL 15 and decided to do a number on our friends at EA as a glorious last stand in the world of video game development. All we know is this: when you launch NHL, you'd do well to leave your conceptions of reality at the door. Because when it comes to reality, EA has a brand of its own.

Tagesson! Always returning, and I like it that way.

Ignore the little edgelords. Good luck with the team, see you on the ice.

NHL 99 intro with Heroes by David Bowie. Never forget.

"Play with your instinct," he would say. There I was, in a drop-in game as left winger. I'd like to think I scored some points, but I can't remember for sure. After the game, an invite popped up on my screen. It was for a party chat. It came from one of my random teammates. I joined and said hello. A brief moment of awkward silence was interrupted by a brisk cheery voice. The guy had seen EA advertise my stats during the game. He thought I had racked up an impressive point total. That was JParola, whose team I then joined. I ended up playing thousands of games by his side in a defensive partnership that would last years. In our first team together, Parola actually started out on offense. During one particular game he kind of flared about our defense. If memory serves, our RD at the time was on the puck. Instead of making the obvious pass that would have kept our offense going, he chose to shoot the puck and cause a turnover. Parola decided he had seen enough. He said he'd switch to defense for a game to show us how it's done. He thought he'd get right back to being a forward after that, but it was not meant to be. He was far too good down there. We always knew each other on the ice, but our approach was different. The more confident Parola trusted his instinct to guide his game. He knew he had a high sense for making the right moves. I tried to analyze every little thing I did and react accordingly. In hindsight, Parola's game philosophy makes more sense to me than ever. I have only recently begun to adopt it. There's no point trying to force order into something that's chaotic at its core. In any situation on the ice, you can never control for all the variables. Maybe that's possible in offline with bots but not in 6 vs. 6. That's why it makes sense to react to whatever happens, when it happens. And that's best done by instinct rather than conscious decision. That will always be quicker and more effective. I mean, as long as you're good. Like Parola.

Was that a slip-up or has the team decided to expand its international diversity? 😁

I learned that this player is currently a free agent. My own team has enough defenders but maybe someone else's doesn't. Jyrkkis entered my awareness in 2010. He and his friend TehhAhola joined my EASHL club at the time. A lot of his traits that have carried over to this day were already evident. The 15-year-old kid was a relaxed, even docile person, which I thought a bit unusual for a guy his age. My conception of most teen boys was a petulant and disagreeable guy hopped up on Euroshopper energy drinks. If memory serves, it was only once that I ever really witnessed a truly testy jyrkkis. He'd been assigned the task of babysitting some relative, a little girl I think it was. You know how those really young kids can get, especially if you're just trying to chill with some EASHL, so it was understandable even if out of character for jyrkkis. Jyrkkis was always a very mentally predictable guy. He's not stupid, not in the least, but with him you always know what you're going to get. He's never petty and he steers clear of any drama. He has never let ego get in the way. He can be stern when needed, but never in a way that's offensive or annoying to others. All that makes him one of the best team players I've ever encountered. It's not just the persona, though, that inspired me to write this and try to convince some good team out there to give jyrkkis a try. He has developed into an excellent player. He's a small name in the community, but I truly believe he's an elite player who belongs in some of the toughest matchups in the ECL. I don't think he's the flashiest defender. That sounds like something you might say about someone who's actually not that good, but that's not the case here. Jyrkkis at his best, which is amazingly often, brings a similar predictability in his game that he does in his character. He's predictably solid. My latest season with him was with Gotham Knights. I'm known to make plenty of thoughtless decisions that cost a penalty or a goal against my team. Countless times jyrkkis was there to patch things up. Like a guardian angel he'd descend upon the play and stop our team from suffering the consequences of my actions. As a defensive partner, you always know what he's up to because he's right where you want him to be. While I've focused on defense, jyrkkis's offensive contribution deserves to be considered. "Optimal" is the first word that comes to mind. To be blunt, jyrkkis doesn't really come up with the sort of game changing moves you'll see from the very top-end defenders like vatalisti and such. But he has an excellent knack for getting his team across the offensive blue line and once there, his decisions on the puck are intelligent. I would have to say defense is the standout part of jyrkkis's game but you'll definitely appreciate his offense as well. So there you have it. That's jyrkkis, the guy and the player I've had the pleasure of knowing for all these years. Wherever he ends up, I hope to one day see all that ability translate into recognition in the community. Because to me, that's long overdue with this guy.

It's a small thing but I love that they removed broken sticks from online play. Some will argue that such random mishaps are a part of real hockey and aught to be included, but I'm all for decreased randomness and any shift toward a purely skill-based game.