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Hello NHLGamers, I am hoping that what I am about to share will get the community buzzing and bring some serious excitement for what is to come. But first, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. Some of you out there I already know and some of you are new to me. My name is Kim Kallio but amongst gamers I am probably more known as “Hc”, or “Ho0Ceri”. While I have played the NHL series for almost 20 years, I first started creating leagues and tournaments for the NHL gaming community in 2011. Many in the community might know me from the Facebook page I started back in February of 2014; NHL Suomi (currently NHL 17 Suomi). My goal then was – just like it is today – to make the online NHL scene bigger and better. After running my Facebook page for several years, including both HUT and Versus tournaments, I am happy to say I have gotten to know a lot of people and players who are all dedicated to the same objective I am: Improving the NHL gaming experience for all of the community. Today, I am excited to announce I will bring my passion, knowledge, experience and dedication to NHLGamer.com where my main task will be to run 1vs1 tournaments of the same sort I have been running at NHL 17 Suomi, only on a larger scale. I look forward to combining the full power of NHL 17 Suomi and NHLGamer.com to create the biggest and most competitive 1vs1 leagues in Europe. I also look forward to interacting with all of you in the near future. Keep your eyes open for a 1vs1-tournament announcement in the near future, NHLGamers.

With only two weeks until the launch of NHL 18 and fans eagerly curious for details surrounding the game, let us recap some recently announced good news for the fans of European Hockey. EA SPORTS decided to blow up the doors with first introducing that the Champions Hockey League will be in the game. Shortly after that, it was announced that HockeyAllsvenskan and the Erste Bank Eishockey Liga also will be included. In case you’re wondering what the CHL is, we’d describe the Champions Hockey League as a tournament where the top teams of Europe play against each other in a fashion that we are used to in the football scene. Although it’s still not followed even remotely in the same magnitude as on the football side, we can hope the interest towards this league grows on the hockey side as well. The including of HockeyAllsvenskan was a really exciting thing especially for Swedish NHL-gamers as they can once again play the famous Stockholm Derby, Djurgården vs AIK with friends. Or why not give Leksand another chance in the famous Daladerby and face off against their bitter rivals, the team that knocked them down from the SHL: Mora IK. The press releases didn’t specify whether these leagues are actually included in the game as full playable seasons with schedules, or if they are mainly to be used in individual games or replacement teams in the franchise mode, as we’ve seen done before. At this stage we can only speculate, but whatever the approach is, we welcome these new teams to the game with open arms! The features of HockeyAllsvenskan might add something to the mix in the ECL scene as well; It has been rumoured that the ECL Elite team Synergy might reveal a Björklöven jersey What do you think about the inclusion of these leagues? Will you play with this teams, or perhaps just use their jerseys for HUT or EASHL? Let us know in the comments below. -chavelski

Hey NHL Gamers, We hope you are enjoying the NHL 18 Beta as much as we are! If you haven't had the chance yet, you should check out the new NHL 18 trailer, titled NHL Threes Official Gameplay Trailer. You can check out the new trailer below: Campaigns, playable mascots, teams other than NHL teams... these all sound like good things for this mode in my opinion, but what do you think? Are you looking forward to getting on the ice with one of the mascots, or are you sticking to the other game modes, and if so, which one(s)? Let us know in the comments below! Until next time Gamers!

Hey NHL Gamers, we hope you are enjoying the NHL 18 Beta to the fullest by now! If not, be sure to check out our Beta Code Giveaway below: As you probably know, a beta of a game is more than just a demo for the consumers. Sure, it can be used as a marketing tool to get people excited for a game and I believe in the case of the NHL series it doubles as a demo, but it also usually serves a bigger purpose, such as: Getting general feedback from the customers before the game release. Introducing the beta to a bigger amount of people will certainly bring out some technical issues that hasn't been noted before and it can then be fixed before putting the game on disc (or at the very latest in the form of a day one patch). Testing the online server capabilities. Collecting data about customer behavior within the game for multiple purposes. We here at NHLGamer are playing the NHL 18 beta at least as much as the next guy and are very passionate about discussing our findings as well. We created a discussion thread for this purpose and we will also be sharing our key points with EA SPORTS as well (we're also pretty sure they are lurking around the forums this time a year to read about what us gamers have to say ). So please, join us in the discussion and vote on our poll by going to this forum thread: EA is also looking for direct feedback from all us, in the form of "General discussion and feedback", "Technical issues" and "Bug reporting". You can read more and participate in their official discussion by following this link. That's all for now folks, I'll let you get back to your beta gaming! On behalf of the NHLGamer staff,

Hey NHL gamers, We hope you are already enjoying the NHL 18 Beta! Our staff is committed to streaming the beta almost non-stop, so why don't you stop by for a chat. Our first stream is already underway and the first host is @vSilenttio, who is playing with his team SIKA. He is talking to his team in Finnish, so someone please go and tell him "English please". Other confirmed hosts include @OxtreeLAT, @gzell60 and @Dominointi. Without further adieu, please jump in: https://www.twitch.tv/nhlgamertwitch On behalf of the NHLGamer staff,

A new game calls for new features and one of the announced additions to NHL 18 is that of HUT ROOKIES. In accordance with the direction EA has decided to go - the special focus on the young stars of today in both marketing and developement – these player cards puts the spotlight on the brightest shining youngsters in each of the 31(!) NHL teams. Having taking some liberties with the term ”Rookies”, the players in this set of special cards range from 3+ years pros like Matt Dumba, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Alexander Barkov, to players like Patrik Laine, Jimmy Vesey and Zack Werenski who made their debut last year. Having a set of cards like this, with a chosen player for every team is nothing new in this game mode that everybody loves to hate, but still play anyway. Last year it was called HUT Heroes and revolved around the legends of yesterday. What is different this time around though is the availability of the cards and the ratings they got. While HUT Heroes could only be unlocked through collecting an entire team of cards (players, jerseys, arena etc.), HUT Rookies seems to be dealt out for free when first starting your team. The team you choose as your favorite at the start of the game – the young star of that team will be added to your roster. Anyone thinking about choosing Toronto just to get that shiny special edition Austen Matthews to dangle around your opponents with? Not so fast! While HUT Heroes pushed the limits on how good a rating could reach (all of the cards boasted at least 93+) – these cards seems to be nerfed down versions of the players in question, since all of the cards have a rating of 85 (with player specific variations on the sub categories). With HUT ROOKIES including players like Draisaitl, Laine and Calvin Pickard – it is not hard to assume that the base cards of said players have different values (reasonable thinking places Draisaitl and Laine with a way higher overall than Calvin Pickard). For anyone familiar with the game mode a 85 overall does not impress – players of that calibre goes for 500-1000 coins on the open market, and usually leaves the line up after less than 50 games. That being said, EA recently announced that they are doing a big overhaul on the ratings system – meaning that 85 overall could have a bigger impact on your lineup than previous years. This would be a thankful change from 17 where the amount of 99 rated cards reached inflation levels making everything below 90 less than useless. Only time will tell how big of an impact this new feature will have on the HUT gameplay – but we can sure agree that them cards are lookin’ shiney! Which card will you be snagging up? Let us know in the comments! Follow this link for a list of all of the players: https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2017/nhl-18-hut-rookies

Good evening, Gamers! It's now time for the Summer Cup Semifinals as we only have four teams remaining in the competition. It seems like all the big dogs (the top 4 of the regular season) have already been eliminated from the playoffs! However, the whole Summer Cup has been pretty even from start to this point, so I'm not sure if there are any underdogs in this competition. Anyways, here are the results of Round 2: NG Club Kannunkulma vs. NG Cheap Shot: 1-3NG Parolan Visa vs. NG International Army: 2-3NG Nighthawks vs. NG Trashers: 3-0NG 50 Shades of Blades vs. NG Alcohology: 3-0 The remaining two match-ups are very interesting to follow as both pairs have one clear favorite team (NG Nighthawks & NG 50 Shades of Blades) to get the chance to win those free copies of NHL18, while both less favored teams (NG Cheap Shot & NG International Army) fought for their playoff spots pretty much until the very last days of the regular season. However, they both have a great playoff-run behind them and we're pretty sure that they are not ready to give up just because their opponents might have had stronger seasons so far - at least on paper. The match-ups for the semifinals are: NG Nighthawks (5) - NG Cheap Shot (15) NG 50 Shades of Blades (6) - NG International Army (14) Stay tuned for one more cool thing before the Beta arrives - I can promise that it's something that people have been asking us to do. But before that - good luck everyone and have a nice week! @vSilenttio for NHLGamer.com

Battle Royale After what can only be described as a thriller of a tournament, Laser HT has been crowned the champion of the 4th European Championship League in a plot that would have left even Stephen King hanging on the edge of his seat, while desperately holding onto his MUKI. The start of the season was Written in the Stars, but the scripture had too much TIKI TALK in it, and was thus shattered around with a banhammer, also known as Kenu's Taikasauva, with other teams picking up the fragments for points as the season progressed - eventually turning it into a Nordic Nightmare for them, on the first round of the playoffs. How we saw nightmares on Round 2 is anyone’s guess, as on Round 1 they had triumphed against an Unknown team. In an extremely competitive regular season the Northern Stars were fading and only two Swedish team made it to the playoffs, but unfortunately lacked the Synergy to shut down the beam team of to-be-champions. One team seemed to regard the playoff-line non-existent, and in their nearly Limitless limitlessness almost eliminated themselves out of the limited-for-eight playoffs. No Dynasty was made this season, either, as they continued an impressive record of 3 Game 7 losses in the past four tournaments, reportedly leading to a violent burst of Nordic Lightning in the vicinity of Kouvola. All the while, at the bottom of the standings, there was a team that Refused to Lose only four times during the tournament. Other relegations were the Animalia of Elite; Finnish Roosters and SIKA (pig) will be seen in the Pro division next season, together with Rynnäkköviikset. Promoted teams The teams that were promoted from Pro to Elite for ECL 5 are: Carlsberg HC, Kattiautomaatti, Silver Sword Griffins and Sjukstugan. We will inform of any changes to the divisions and teams after ECL 5 registration, if need be. Awards A big thank you to @The_Alpha_Furyan for compiling the statistics for all three divisions. Here's a list of the best performers in Elite during ECL4. Forwards Most points: Dominointi [39+55 = 94p in 28 games - 3.35 Points/GP], Laser HT Most goals: PleeMaker [49g in 30 games - 1.63 Goals/GP], Limitless Most assists: Dominointi [55a in 28 games - 1.96 Assists/GP], Laser HT Most hits: PleeMaker [145 hits in 30 games - 4.83 Hits/GP], Limitless Best +/-: Haldeem, Penatski, tbnantti, PleeMaker & nylanderi [+43 in 30 games], Limitless Defensemen Most points by a Defenseman: nylanderi [12+22 = 34p in 30 games - 1.13 Points/GP], Limitless Snapu48 [4+30 = 34p in 30 games - 1.13 Points/GP], Dynasty Haldeem [6+28 = 34p in 30 games - 1.13 Points/GP], Limitless Most goals by a Defenseman: nylanderi [12g in 30 games - 0.40 Goals/GP], Limitless Most assists by a Defenseman: Snapu48 [30a in 30 games - 1.00 Assists/GP], Dynasty Most hits by a Defenseman: friilander [140 Hits in 30 games - 4.66 Hits/GP], SIKA Goalies Best Save% (min. 50% of games played): Ranta83 [80.58% in 30/30 games], Unknown Best GAA (min. 50% of games played): Sandr0hh [1.93 GAA in 16/30 games], Dynasty Most Wins (W+OTW) by a Goalie: Ranta83 [19 Ws in 30 games], Unknown Most Shutouts: Danielcadabra [4 shutouts in 12 games], Written in the Stars DUNZA [4 shutouts in 14 games], Synergy VilberttoCarlos [4 shutouts in 18 games], Nordic Nightmare FinKonna [4 shutouts in 30 games], Limitless Playoff MVP Dominointi, Laser HT Words of a Champion Now, let’s hand over the pen to Risto “Dominointi” Järvi, the captain of Laser HT and the MVP of the tournament: “For the regular season our objective was only to make the playoffs. It got very tight in the end, but we managed to battle ourselves to 7th. A couple of players left the team at the end of last season and we got the replacements for them from Nordic Blizzard. I think it made each players’ role in the team much more clear. We played the regular season quite a bit differently than what people perhaps expected or had seen from us before. I played quite a lot up the ice, looking for stretch passes while the wings gave close support on the breakouts. I feel like it helped a lot, at least against certain teams. The team probably wasn’t on equal level skill-wise compared to last autumn, but this season we played strong as a team from the get-go, which I think was the primary reason for our success. Nowadays in this game you have to play as a team if you want to succeed, the level of competition is simply so tough. In the playoffs we were just trying to keep our own end clear of goals, with the front of the net being the keywords. We knew that if we kept our defence tight, we had a chance to win every game, as we pretty much always manage to score at least a few goals. We couldn’t go into a goal-scoring competition - something that would not have ended up well against every team. On the first round of the playoffs we faced Synergy, a team we’re very familiar with. For the most part we knew how they’d be playing and where we would need to strike at. The first games were tight, but we managed to clinch them and eventually won the series. On the second round we were up against Nordic Nightmare, a team that eliminated us last year when playing for Nordic Blizzard, so we were looking for a revenge. We thought of our approach carefully because Nordic Nightmare has a unique style of play for Elite. Our game-plan was to strike them on the breakout and try to prevent their quick counter-attacks. We knew they’d be playing very straightforward hockey and blocking shots would be important. Of course, we supposed our opponent would also know how we’d be playing, so we tried to mix that up a little as well by getting more pucks to the defencemen and more shots from the blueline. We played well and deserved to progress on to the finals. In the finals we were up against a very familiar team, Dynasty. We knew them to be a great defensive team and to add to that they have a lot of skill on every position. Their goalies were top of the league, too. We set out to play brave hockey and apply strong pressure to the defencemen, always shooting the puck and crashing the net when there’s an opening. The first four games of the series were tight, but somehow it felt we had that slight edge, even though the stats were very even in every game. The weekend break started with us leading the series 3-1. After the break we had games 5 & 6, and quite frankly, we had no chance. The opponent had changed their approach and our tactic was not working at all. Deserved wins for Dynasty and off we went for a game seven. For the deciding game, we agreed to just play our regular game, not try anything too complicated and just park the bus in the neutral zone. After some thrilling events and a lot of screams and shouts, we clinched it 2-1 and won the title. The series could not have been tighter – that’s just how it ended this time. Overall, I think Leksa played a fantastic tournament. Counting both the regular season and the playoffs, I don’t think he had a single off-game. I will tip my hat to the performance of our goalies in the playoffs, especially Hansu in the finals. The defence was rock solid throughout the playoffs, too. Vesa and Wille were excellent in the finals and Selarit played as well as he always does. As for the future of the team, I can’t tell. We agreed that we’ll look at it again before the beta, but most likely we’ll be continuing with the same lineup.” The Decider Scored by who else than Risto "Dominointi" Järvi in the closing seconds of the 3rd period of Game 7. Broomsticks and Magnets Every year the game franchise makes small but significant changes to online gameplay. One year it's short-side one-timers, the other it's far-side one-timers. One year poke-checks are overpowered, the other it's stick-lifts. I'm yet to witness a year, however, in which the rock-paper-scissor of the meta game would've have found, say, rock unbeatable. This year there were some tricks to be found in terms of puck control, the kind of tricks your user manual doesn't tell. Some individuals and teams started picking up on these towards the latter parts of ECL 3, one of the masters of such arts winning the MVP award of the tournament. These type of players and their rather spectacular-looking play-style I call Magnets. Some teams spent their off-season between ECL 3 & 4 figuring out how to deal with Magnets, and one of the answers was a Broomstick. By now, the Broomstick technique has spread wide and has arisen some heated debates, and I know there are teams that refuse to play against each other because of this. The Broomstick is of course the crouch block position you can go to by pressing L1. The most obvious advantage is that you can't get penalized; you can't trip, slash or interfere with a player while doing so. While I think anyone would agree using the function in the game as intended should be allowed, many would say spamming it the way it is possible to spam, is effectively abusing a glitch. Personally, I'm inclined to disagree that it should be forbidden or whatnot. The Broomstick is much more effective along the boards than it is anywhere else as a means to strip the puck. Now, if we look at board play and puck control in general, is it balanced, or does the offensive or defensive player have an advantage? I think definitely the player with the puck has the advantage; with the puck your player is much more agile, you can actually move your stick through the boards while controlling the puck etc. So, effectively, I find the Broomstick a balancing, not a breaking factor of gameplay. Furthermore, I find the gray area on the defensive side to be larger than on the offensive side. In real hockey, too, you're effectively allowed to do things on the defensive side of the puck that you're not allowed to do when attacking. Also, you can still be a great player in this game even if you never used the whole function. Thank You I had absolutely no stake in organizing ECL 4 and thus would like to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to those that did – Kenneth, Samuli, Max, Väinö, Hampus, Jānis and Teemu, it was yet another great tournament to take part of, thank you very much for your effort on behalf of all of us players, and let’s try to build on this as a community going forward. From now on I’ll be back on-board with the staff as well. Have a great summer everyone, hope to see many of you in the SC - you still have a day left to register have you not done so already, but if not, see you in the autumn with ECL 5!

Hey NHL Gamers! Today marks one of those very special days in the short history of the website we have all been waiting for. In the past few weeks - alongside the ECL 4 Playoffs and our coverage of the IS Cup - interesting and highly promising connections have come together. Thanks to our Staff member Hampus (@The_Alpha_Furyan), who acted as the leading negotiator throughout this process, we are finally able to reveal the first official sponsorship for NHLGamer.com: Summer Cup Season 2, Presented by Webhallen! We could not be more proud of this partnership with one of the leading retailers for consumer electronics, hardware and software in Sweden - running a total of 26 stores scattered across the country. We believe this partner is a perfect match for a populated and innovative eSports platform like NHLGamer. Webhallen can be found here: Online Shop Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube Twitch THE DEAL Webhallen will be accompanying us throughout the duration of Summer Cup Season 2, leading up to the announcement of NHL 18 during E3 in Los Angeles which takes place on June 13-15. While everyone is going to be excited about EA SPORTS NHL 18 feature announcements, trailers and other types of content; Webhallen will act as NHLGamer's recommended retail source for purchasing the game, due to release in September 2017 (estimate). Finally, to honor the best Summer Cup Season 2 teams, Webhallen will be offering the following prizes for Summer Cup Season 2: Summer Cup winners receive one physical copy of NHL 18 (PS4) per player, arriving at launch Members of the 2nd place team receive runner-up prizes, which are to be announced in due time OUTLOOK Last year around 150 players took part in this draft-type league, which was aimed at experienced players as well as community greenhorns. The stated goal of the tournament was to improve networking between our players and to open up ways for prospects to make their way into EASHL's best teams out there. This is the same promise we are going to deliver on with Season 2, only even better. Based on this, there will be a few tweaks to the following aspects of Summer Cup: Team building: No more than 2 players from a single ECL 4 team are allowed to play in the same Summer Cup team. This rule applies to the final rosters, after transfers and free agents. Team names: Due to our new API reporting tool, the Summer Cup will be played in dedicated EASHL teams which will have "NG" as a prefix - for example "NG Golden Knights". Sign-ups: To rule out unfortunate circumstances when it comes to player positioning, holidays and other aspects, the sign-ups will follow a clearer structure, allowing captains to recognize fitting players more easily. Draft procedure: We are working on improving our draft pick tool and simplifying communication towards and between team captains to reduce idling, allowing us to increase the speed in which draft picks are made. LEAGUE DETAILS Summer Cup Season 2 will take place on PS4 - if you are looking for Xbox action, we would love to see your team sign up for Xbox ECL! Last day to sign up is Wednesday, May 24th. Players instead of teams sign up using the registration tool linked at the bottom of the post. All signed up players are aimed to be seeded into teams with a size of 10 players (may vary). Out of all registrations, NHL Gamer Staff will elect an according number of team captains from the players that offered to take on a captaincy rule in their sign-up post - anyone is allowed to apply for it. Team captains will receive a draft sheet on May 26th, containing all signed up players and relevant information in a structured form. Team captains will be taking part in a live draft event on May 28th, picking their roster until all players are seeded. All games are played 6vs6 using dedicated EASHL teams. The leagues are set to start on the week of May 29th and aimed to be finished in July. Full rules will be released after registration is over. HOW TO PARTICIPATE To participate, make sure you are logged in or create an account first, visit the sign-up page and fill in all fields of the registration form like below - make sure the player positions in your Player Card are up-to-date so captains know who they are drafting! You can update your Player Card on the "Edit Player" page. Sign-up page: Click here! That's all you need to do... sounds easy eh? Let's take this opportunity - together with our new partner Webhallen - to finish NHL 17 with a bang: Sending shockwaves through the community and setting up NHLGamer.com's ambitious goals for NHL 18. @gzell60 for NHLGamer.com

Hey NHL Gamers, We recently posted our first part from our visit to Seinäjoki to attend the IS Cup. I had the privilege of attending this event with the wonderful @The_Alpha_Furyan. You can read more about the tournament in that article, as this time around it's about the video recap we've put together from that weekend. To make sense of all the material we collected during this intense day (it was a lot), we enlisted the help of professional Viaplay video editor @LastMandalorian who did a fantastic job putting everything together. You can check out the end result below! Hope you enjoy the video as much as we enjoyed being there! Can't wait to be a part of more of these events in the future! As mentioned above, check out our written first part if you missed it previously: Until next time,

Exciting news NHL Gamers, EA Sports has released, what they describe as Patch 2.0 or Content Update #2 for NHL 17. It includes another impressive list of fixes for this year's title. Especially goalies should be excited, as it seem like quite an extensive amount of the fixes has been put into issues that revolve around goaltending. Be sure to leave your comments about your experiences in the comments for us non-goalies to read! You will be happy to read that the issue with the ceiling ornaments blocking the view in some camera angles. One of the more surprising additions is the addition of 11 new goal celebrations, which we're sure will bring some more variety into the highlight reels. For the full list of changes in the patch, please see below: Sources: https://forums.ea.com/en/nhl/discussion/81396/nhl-17-patch-tuner-notes-updated-nov-21-2016 https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2016/content-update-2-notes https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2016/content-update-2

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, We hope you are enjoying the NHL 17 Beta so far! Over the course of the last days we have been giving out dozens of codes for both PS4 and Xbox One. So many, in fact, that we hadn't had the time to jump into the game as much as we wanted to! We are very thankful for all the nice responses we received for getting you into the game, and we will of course continue to bring you lots of exciting stuff. The concept behind releasing a beta is of course to iron out any game breaking flaws, annoying bugs and get the community's thoughts on how we like the new features that are new to the franchise. This is accomplished by exposing the beta to as many of us hockey fans as possible. What we at NHLGamer.com want to do now is to get as much feedback from the community as possible and put together a list of the feedback to submit to the EA Sports NHL team in Vancouver. In this case, we don't want anyone to feel stuck behind a language barrier, so feel free to send in your feedback in English, Finnish, French, German or Swedish and we'll go ahead to translate all of your input and compile a list of all relevant issues and improvement ideas. Please use the comments below to voice your opinion and we will make sure you are being heard!

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 NHL Gamers, after releasing the first trailer for NHL 17, EA also kicked off their yearly Cover Vote again. This is the schedule: Round 1: April 26th at 12:00 pm EST – May 2nd at 3:00 pm EST. Round 2: May 3rd at 12:00 pm EST – May 9th at 3:00 pm EST. Round 3: May 10th at 12:00 pm EST – May 16th at 3:00 pm EST. The winner will be announced at the NHL Awards on June 22nd. To leave your vote, visit this page. Below you can find the match-ups for Round 1:

Hey NHL Gamers, EA Sports just released their first trailer for NHL 17, called "The Vision". You can find it below: We will be back with a trailer analysis shortly!

Exciting news NHL Gamers! EA Sports has released a teaser for their upcoming NHL 17 title. While the short clip is as much a teaser as it can be and doesn't really reveal anything about the game, you'll be excited to learn that we should be seeing the first bits of information about the game early next week; Tuesday the 26th of April, to be exact. We will keep you up to date on the subject, but note that EA also wants you to become an NHL Insider and sign up for their newsletter. I hope you are as excited as we are! Tuesday can't come soon enough!