Search the Community

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.

Hello NHLGamers, As the saying goes, better late than never. After janbonators first article as a returning member of the NHLGamer staff, the exquisite ECL Elite Season Report, we are back to tie a final bow on our ECL 4-season with the ECL Pro and Lite Season Reports. While they won't be as extensive as janbos in-depth chronicle of the Elite season - there are awards to be handed out and individual performances to celebrate. ECL 4 - PRO The Pro division featured a total of 32 teams competing where 16 made the playoffs and 8 faced relegation. The Top 4 teams of the Pro playoffs all secured a spot in Elite for next season, truly displaying what a competitive hornets nest the Pro division was in its first ever season. The ECL 4 Pro Champion was Carlsberg HC, who achieved this honor by beating Sjukstugan 4-1 in the Best of-7 Finals. Let's get to some of the other individual and team performances. Promotions & Relegations The teams that were promoted from Lite to Pro for ECL 5 were: Lavetten, DEAD END KINGS, Hawks Hockey Club and Lite champions J P T J. Congratulations to all these teams on well executed seasons! The teams that were relegated from Pro to Lite for ECL 5 were: Company of Geeks, Thunder Tigers, The Lights Out and The Beagle Boys. We hope to see you back next season, hungrier than ever. Stay strong! Should there be any changes to the divisions and teams after ECL 5 registration, we will inform you of these events. Awards Here's a list of the best performers in the Pro division during ECL4. Forwards Most points: Tapparafan- [52+48 = 100p in 30 games - 3.33 Points/GP], Nordic Stars Most goals: BiggestEight [61g in 30 games - 2.03 Goals/GP], HC Checkmate Most assists: TackleControl [55a in 28 games - 1.96 Assists/GP], HC Checkmate Most hits: jnmxx [171 hits in 30 games - 6.57 Hits/GP], Kattiautomaatti Best +/-: Janzuh [+85 in 28 games], Carlsberg HC Defensemen Most points by a Defenseman: Janzuh [11+31 = 42p in 28 games - 1.50 Points/GP], Carlsberg HC Most goals by a Defenseman: Janzuh [11g in 28 games - 0.39 Goals/GP], Carlsberg HC Most assists by a Defenseman: Janzuh [31a in 28 games - 1.10 Assists/GP], Carlsberg HC Most hits by a Defenseman: Tanski87 [164 Hits in 28 games - 5.85 Hits/GP], Rusty Blades Goalies Best Save% (min. 50% of games played): Hullued [83.62% in 24/28 games], Shameful Knights Best GAA (min. 50% of games played): Zande95 [1.52 GAA in 17/28 games], Carlsberg HC Most Wins (W+OTW) by a Goalie: hoiggaa [25 Ws in 30 games], Kattiautomaatti Most Shutouts: LastMandalorian [5 shutouts in 26 games], Sjukstugan Playoff MVP joukki13, Carlsberg HC ECL 4 - LITE The Lite division featured a total of 32 teams competing, including two different conferences with 16 teams each. All Lite teams made the playoffs where they had the opportunity to both win the title and secure promotion to Pro. The ECL 4 Lite Champion was J P T J, who won the championship after a grueling series versus Hawks Hockey Club that lasted all 7 games. Awards Here's a list of the best performers in the Lite division during ECL4. Forwards Most points: makeee76 [71+56 = 127p in 28 games - 4.53 Points/GP], J P T J Most goals: makeee76 [71g in 28 games - 2.53 Goals/GP], J P T J Most assists: moilanenC & mikihoo [60a in 28 games - 2.14 Assists/GP], J P T J Most hits: Albaz90 [162 hits in 30 games - 5.40 hits/GP], Vemppaosasto Best +/-: makeee76, moilanenC, mikihoo & jonezki26 [+85 in 28 games], J P T J Defensemen Most points by a Defenseman: Rankaisija_ [8+50 = 58p in 30 games - 1.93 Points/GP], Old Farts Most goals by a Defenseman: Anenthran [11g in 25 games - 0.44 Goals/GP], Dynamo Danglers Most assists by a Defenseman: Rankaisija_ [50a in 30 games - 1.66 Assists/GP], Old Farts Most hits by a Defenseman: TEAMSEILA [228 hits in 28 games - 8.14 hits/GP], EN HUND Goalies Best Save% (min. 50% of games played): Gunde021 [86.69% in 19/28 games], DEAD END KINGS Best GAA (min. 50% of games played): Gunde021 [1.52 GAA in 19/28 games], DEAD END KINGS Most Wins (W+OTW) by a Goalie: Tonza-_-89 [21 Ws in 27 games] & Nebelparder55555 [21 Ws in 26 games] Most Shutouts: IFKPEKlNG2k15 [5 shutouts in 26 games], Lavetten Playoff MVP moilanenC, J P T J Thank You As janbonator took the opportunity to thank us Staff members for organizing the ECL 4 season in his Elite Season Report, I would in return like to thank everyone in the community for your participation and continued support. The ECL franchise is something we are immensly proud of and truly the flagship in our journey towards the ultimate NHL gaming experience. With the introduction of Versus (and possibly other types of tournaments...) NHLGamer.com is taking the next step in its development, but make no mistake: ECL is at our core. Again, thank you. Later skaters,

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,

Hello NHLGamers, It’s been rumored, it’s been talked about… we even hinted at it earlier during the season but tonight we are finally making the official announcement: moving forward after ECL 3, the European Championship League will take on a skill and merit-based divisional format. This is your post to find out everything about this new system and the next step in Online Competitive EASHL gaming before it is launched in ECL 4. Divisions First thing’s first, the divisions. The idea behind creating these divisions will be expanded upon in the text but the short version is this: We are continually working to improve the site, the leagues and the overall NHLGamer experience for everyone. Some might say this development process is moving too slow and does not reach far enough, some might say the website is expanding in ways that it should not. The community is special in many ways, not just because parts of it has stayed together for years (including previous websites, the community is now more than half a decade old) but also because it is continually expanding. NHLGamer has almost doubled its membership in less than a year while still maintaining its core, which is all of you in the community. It creates a tough balancing act when trying to create a fun place for EASHL rookies that want to experience the thrill of playing competitively for the first time while trying to give the hardened tournament veterans what they want, which is the best tournament possible where the stakes are high and winner takes all. Still, in an attempt to achieve this, we will be creating a divisions system where the hope is that teams will be better matched against each other – something we hope will lead to tighter games, more fun for everyone involved all the while creating a stronger foundation for the tournament to stand on. Our hope is also that more teams will be inclined to stay together and build longer lasting franchises. We’ve structured this post so that we should be able to answer as many of your questions as possible by getting to them one by one – a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) if you will. This FAQ will be available for future reference when the actual division based leagues come around. Despite this, if you feel something is unclear or just plain weird, feel free to sound off in the comment section with questions like: “Well, what if this happens..?” and we will do our best and elaborate. Let’s get to it: Q: How many divisions will there be? The short answer is 3 – a total of 3 separate divisions. The longer answer is that we set off to create an environment where all the top teams face off in the prestigious ECL Elite, up and coming franchises battle with veteran teams in the competitive ECL Pro and all newly entered or learning teams start off in ECL Amateur to hone their skills. This prevents teams with years of experience and chemistry from numerous EASHL competitions, from facing off with teams new to the site who are just learning what it takes to play EASHL at the ECL level. Q: How many teams will there be in each division? We are looking at a total of 16 teams for ECL Elite, 16 teams for ECL Pro and, depending on the amount of registrations, 16-24 (or more) teams in ECL Amateur. The goal is to keep ECL Elite and ECL Pro consistently the same size (16 teams each), which means if teams completely drop out of the division system or inactive teams return (read on), there will be balancing measures - meaning increased amounts of promotions or relegations. During extraordinary circumstances, ECL Pro can deviate from its 16-team baseline but ECL Elite has a hard cap of 16 teams. This part, much like inactive teams, is specified further down in the text. In case ECL Amateur sees an extraordinary amount of registrations, the staff will then decide if the division can be split up into two “conferences” (like ECL 3) or if registrations will have to be closed for the tournament in question. As a rule of thumb, we always do our best to include all registered teams in our leagues, as long as it’s reasonable. Q: How many games will there be in a season? The amount of games will, as per usual, be 2 games against each opponent – meaning 30 games (15 opponents) each season for ECL Elite & ECL Pro and somewhere around the same for ECL Amateur depending on the amount of teams. This ensures lean, hard-fought seasons with what we hope is the perfect amount of games – you get a sense of both the regular season grind while at the same time reaching the playoff threshold in just 5 short weeks: this by playing 3 opponents per week, just like during the last few seasons. Q: How will promotion and relegation work? First off, we will have promotions and relegations. Having closed divisions is not something we are considering at the moment so we are going with the European hockey model where teams can be both promoted and relegated in the different divisions. For ECL Elite: 8 out of 16 teams will make the ECL Elite Playoffs where the Top 8 teams start off in quarterfinals, then proceed to semi-finals and finally the ECL Finals where the league winner will be crowned. The teams that finish #15 and 16 in ECL Elite will instantly be relegated and play in ECL Pro the following season. Teams that finish #13 and 14 will not be instantly relegated, but will have to play two teams (one each) from ECL Pro in a Best of 7- ECL Relegation/Promotion Round. Teams that finish in places 9-12 will not play in the playoffs nor be subject to relegation. In summary, this means a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 4 teams are relegated each season. It also means 10 out of 16 teams will see some form of post-season play and ensure that every team will be fighting all season, either to make the playoffs or avoid elimination. For ECL Pro: 8 out of 16 teams will make the ECL Pro Playoffs where the Top 8 teams start off in quarterfinals, then proceed to semi-finals and finally the ECL Pro Finals where the league winner will be crowned. The top two teams (finalists) of ECL Pro are instantly promoted and will play the season after in ECL Elite. The teams finishing in spots #3 and 4 (the losers of the semi-final round) will then move on to face teams #13 and 14 (one each) from ECL Elite in the Relegation/Promotion Round (7 games). As far as relegations go, teams that finish #15 and 16 will be instantly relegated to ECL Amateur for the following season. Teams that finish #13 and 14 will follow the same model mentioned earlier and play two teams from ECL Amateur (one each) in a best-out-of 7 battle. In summary, this means 10 out of 16 teams in ECL Pro sees some form of post-season play. For ECL Amateur: 8 out of 16 teams (depending on the size of the division) will make the ECL Amateur Playoffs where the Top 8 teams start off in quarterfinals, then proceed to semi-finals and finally the ECL Amateur Finals where the league winner will be crowned. The top two teams (finalists) of ECL Amateur are instantly promoted and will play the next season in ECL Pro. The teams that finish in spots #3 and 4 will then move on to face teams #13 and 14 from ECL Pro in the Relegation/Promotion Round (7 games). In summary, this means a total of 4 teams in ECL Amateur will be given the chance to advance to ECL Pro, something that we hope will be a welcome addition for all our new members looking to make their way up. Q: What teams will play where when the Divisional system starts up in ECL Season 4? We said before ECL 3 that the new format (bigger conferences, more games) was mainly for two reasons; 1. To try out the format and see what the benefits and disadvantages were and 2. To make sure all teams truly got the opportunity to distinguish themselves over a long season before we introduced divisions. Therefore, the teams that finish this long, grinding regular season in the Top 4 in each of the ECL 3 conferences will have guaranteed spots in ECL Elite, locking up the first 8 spots. The next 8 spots will be decided by the ECL 3 playoffs. This gives the remaining 24 playoff-bound teams (seeds 5-16) a chance to – outside of battling for the title in our biggest tournament yet – use the playoffs to get their hands on the final 8 spots. The deciding factor will be wins. Out of the 24 teams who make the playoffs but are not directly qualified for ECL Elite, the 8 who manages to collect the most playoff wins will be the ones to claim the final spots. In a situation where two or more teams have the same amount of playoff wins, the regular season rank will act as a tie-breaker. The third tie-breaker is PPG in the playoffs and the fourth is PPG in the regular season. This naturally means the 8 teams who aren’t directly qualified to ECL Elite and make it the farthest in the playoffs are the final 8 to be added to the top division. This could theoretically mean that, if there is an upset and a #16 seed beats a #1 seed right away in the first round – they could both be playing in ECL Elite the following season. The teams that made the playoffs in ECL 3, but didn’t make the cut for ECL Elite, will start ECL Season 4 in ECL Pro. Teams that do not qualify for the ECL 3 playoffs will start in ECL Amateur next season. Q: Can a team pause/be inactive for a season? In ECL Elite and ECL Pro, teams can apply to “pause” for one season (in ECL Amateur this is not necessary). This turns them into an inactive team, and they will not participate during that season. They cannot be promoted nor relegated. An inactive team is however expected to play during the following season, otherwise they will lose their current divisional spot. A need for a longer inactivity would have to be brought up with the NHLGamer staff and will be handled on a case-by-case basis. To fulfill the inactive status, the team needs to keep at least their captain and one assistant captain, as well as 2 other players (for a total of 4) on the inactive roster – these players are not allowed to participate with another team in said season, where the team is marked as inactive. Special cases where, for example, 6-7 players outside of the captaincy squad cannot play and will stay inactive but the Captain wants to play for another team and still keep the divisional spot will be handled on an individual basis by the staff. If an inactive team is not able to keep the amount of necessary players on the inactive roster (4), they will lose their inactive status and drop to division 3 for the next season. Q: What if teams split up? Who keeps the divisional spot? On NHLGamer, just like in real life, drama is to be expected. Sometimes it even finds its way into individual teams. But if teams split up, who keeps the spot? The staff will look at each individual case but, as a rule of thumb, the captain is considered the owner of the team. If a team has disagreements where, for example, the captain has lost the faith of his teammates and kicked most of them – he will have to explain his case to the staff. If both assistant captains and at least 3 other members that played for the team the season before applies ownership of the team, they will have a strong case to claim the team (however not the name of the team, unless agreed on with the captain). If a team is completely dismantled, they will not keep their spot in the division. Q: What about newly created teams that consist of established ECL players from several different teams? Do they have to start in ECL Amateur? To have highly skilled, established, experienced EASHL players form a new team only to play in ECL Amateur and be unevenly matched with completely new teams goes against what we’re trying to accomplish with this system. That said, we are aiming to create an environment where longevity, stability and consistency are some of the key factors moving forward. What follows is an attempt to balance these mindsets. Let us use a team from this season as an example; Laser HT. Laser, for those of you who don’t know, has been an established franchise in EASHL tournaments for years. Yet, they had not played in either ECL season 1 nor 2, but the players that today form Laser had. Many of them had even been a part of teams that made the finals, even won the tournaments. Now, ECL 3 was not based on divisions but if it had been – like in the future – Laser could have applied for Exceptional Team Status. This term is drawn from the OHL (Ontario Hockey League) where certain special players (lately John Tavares, Aaron Ekblad and Connor McDavid) have been granted Exceptional Player Status where they were allowed to “skip” one year of waiting to be drafted and were approved to be drafted to the OHL at age 15 instead of age 16. Similarly, new teams can apply for Exceptional Team Status in the ECL where they will be allowed to skip ECL Amateur and start in ECL Pro. At this point, new teams cannot apply directly for ECL Elite as it would undermine the idea of working your way up the divisions and staying there based on ECL results. Anyway, back to Laser. Had Laser applied the Staff would have granted them this status due to a few factors; Longevity and reputation (Several top tournament finishes in their history, always considered a top team when participating) Quality of players (most, if not all, players on the current Laser squad have been leading members and top point producers of teams that finished in the top-4 of both previous tournaments) EASHL 6vs6 ranking (they are ranked in the Top-10 of all European teams) When deciding Exceptional status, there will always be a subjective factor involved but bullet points like the ones in the example above will form the basis of any decision made on whether to grant exceptional status or not. Finally, the term “exceptional status” is there for a reason. These applications will only be granted under very special circumstances. Q: Will there be an ECL Season 5? Will it be played during NHL 17? When will the leagues start for NHL 18? The below are subject to change, but provide an overlook of our plans and what our suggestions are for the upcoming leagues: NHL 17: ECL Season 3 ends by 29.1.2017 ECL Season 4 starts 13.2.2017 and ends 2.4.2017 ECL Season 5 starts 24.4.2017 and ends 18.6.2017 Summer Cup specifics to be determined. (This is a draft-type league) NHL 18: releases 14.9.2017 (estimate) ECL Season 6 starts 16.10.2017 and ends 10.12.2017 ECL Season 7 starts 8.1.2018 and ends 4.3.2018 ECL Season 8 starts 2.4.2018 and ends 27.5.2018 Summer Cup specifics to be determined. (This is a draft-type league) Q: Are you guys out of your minds? This concept/detail x will never work! First of all, this is a proposition that we have set up for the community and we look forward to hearing your feedback. While we have a strong belief in that the plans we propose will be a good step for the community, we don’t blindly believe our plans to be perfect (nor that there is a perfect one-solution-fits-all solution) and we are open to discuss the subject as a whole or the smaller details as long as the discussion and feedback is constructive and respectful. Please elaborate on your own ideas. Verbally attacking the staff, or other community members will not be tolerated and may lead to disciplinary actions. That is all for now. Please feel free to share any and all thoughts you might have in the comment section below. On behalf of the NHLGamer.com Staff,

Hey NHL Gamers, We hope you're as excited as we are about talking about the plans for divisions, which will be introduced in ECL Season 4. We will be releasing a news story tomorrow - Monday the 5th of December, at 21 CET - where we cover our proposed division system in as much detail and covering as many of the frequently asked questions as possible. Can't wait to let the cat out of the bag and get your feedback about our future plans. Until then - good luck on the ice! On behalf of the NHLGamer.com staff,

Hey NHL Gamers, It’s once again time to take a look at some of the discliplinary actions and requests that have been sitting on the staff’s table for a while. Apologies to the parties that have had to wait for a ruling for a while – we aim to streamline this process to be more efficient in the future. In fact, we are looking for more staff members that are able to contribute to our website. If you feel you have what it takes to bring some value to our website – feel free to send me a PM and tell me what you bring to the table. This installment of NHL Gamer Staff rulings covers the following topics: Teams that have left the league Trades a. Trade deadline b. The requests for captains to be allowed to be traded c. Trading of players that have already been on two teams this season Walkover requests a. Mpire - Silver Sword Griffins b. Murohoki - Terrific Tigers Amount of games played a. Too many games played b. Too few games played 1. Teams that have left the league Sadly, we have to add to the list of teams that have decided to leave the league. At least four new teams have decided to leave and that brings our total up to seven. It is important to remember, that in order to keep the league active and all teams active despite their success, we need to discipline the teams that decide to leave. That being said, we’re always interested in hearing why a team choses to leave, so we can – if within our power – do something to prevent this from happening in the future. The below team have decided to leave ECL Season 3: Ganja Bonanzas (Group 1) We’ve been unable to get a confirmation from the captains, but this seems to be the case. We will edit and take action once we get the confirmation. Rising Phantoms (Group 1) Among other issues, the team has been suffering from connection problems, making the gaming experience far from enjoyable and this is why the team has decided to leave. BraZZers (Group 2) We’ve just received news that the ”team broke and cannot play anymore”. HC Solhem (Group 2) The short explanation that we’ve received is that players have left and the team can’t continue in the league. VC Hockey (Group 2) This is a team that has had its issues throughout the season, but the captains worked hard to keep things going and it was looking like they would pull through. The final blow was, though, when an unknown team (outside the ECL, apparently) recruited two of the VC Hockey players, leaving the team below an active roster of eight players. 2. Trades a. Trade deadline The trade deadline is Wednesday the 7th of December and we will allow trades to be done until 23:59 GMT on the 7th. Please remember that the standard rules for trades apply (including the ones discussed below). The trade deadline is also the deadline for aquiring free agents – in other words, no player movement is allowed after the deadline. b. The requests for captains to be allowed to be traded There has been a handful of questions and requests about being allowed to being traded as a captain (this includes assistant captains as well). The rules are very clear about this, but as always, we took the time to look at the raised question together with the staff, as there were some valid points brought up by the players in question that escalated the issue. The reasoning behind this rule is to make sure the players that take the captain role of a team are committed enough to finish the season with the team, as the captains are often the driving force of a functioning team and making everything click. Even an active group of people can struggle, if you remove the person in charge of organizing the schedules. The NHL Gamer staff stands behind this rule and its core idea, which is why we have decided to make no exception to it. One of the issues brought up is the ability to make a team member a captain or assistant captain on the website without this being accepted by the user. While we strongly believe that every user should be informed about the rules and therefore aware of the captains’ responsibilities, we see this as an opportunity to improve our website and you can look forward to users being prompted to accept the captain position in the coming seasons. c. Trading of players that have already been on two teams during season This is a very rare issue, but we’ve had a case where an active player has changed teams at an early stage during the ECL 3 season and wishes to be traded again. As the above discussed case, this is also something that is clearly defined in the rules. While we symphathize with the player in question, the rule is in place to prevent team hopping during a season. We do not suggest that there is anything fishy with the players request, but we want to underline that we wish for players not to switch teams lightly and this is why we are sticking with the rulebook on this. 3. Walkover requests This is an area where we want to thank the majority of teams for excellent communication – both when communicating their possible issues with agreeing on scheduled games and with negotiating with the fellow captains. There has been some true sportsmanship there – thank you! However, there will always be some cases that don’t go as smoothly for one reason or another. I’m happy to say that one of the problems that was supposed to be listed below was actually solved by the teams on their own and the games have now been played. a. Mpire - Silver Sword Griffins In this matchup, it’s Mpire who have requested the walkover wins. The reason is that SSG has asked to reschedule the default date and then rescheduled that date as well. SSG offered a good explanation for why the rescheduled date didn’t end up working. SSG has also been very active at offering new dates and based on their explanation, Mpire has been slow to reply to these and eventually came to request WO’s instead of agreeing on a new date. SSG has in fact offered to play the games against Mpire on any date they wish to play. We think this is more than a reasonable offer and ask for the teams to finish the battle on the ice. b. Murohoki - Terrific Tigers Terrific Tigers were unable to get their goalie online and had other games (in another league) scheduled for later. They offered the WO’s themselves, so in this case the staff has chosen not to interfere, while we of course prefer to see the games played. 4. Amount of games played a. Too many games played In order to keep the league as even and interesting as possible, we have added restrictions to the re-scheduling of games in the rulebook. We have noticed that not all teams have followed this rule as strictly as others and in the process has slightly more played games than other teams. As a benchmark, we used 36-38 games at this stage. That being said, the total amount of played games for each team that is over is still reasonably even – with game amounts that can be expected to be played within a week. At this stage, we will not punish teams that have played some extra games, as the outcome at this stage is within the parameters that we designed the rule for in the first place. While it’s of course important to follow the rules under all circumstances, the staff would prefer too many games played opposed to too few. However, we ask teams to still respect this rule and the below listed mentality: o Prioritize the default scheduled games first. o Don’t race to finish the regular season just because you have nothing better to do. If half of your team is unavailable for the upcoming week – that is a better excuse. o When playing games earlier than your default schedule, always target the nearest opponents – we want the majority of teams to finish the regular season on the same date. b. Too few games played On the other side of the spectrum, are teams that are behind on their schedule. We want to give the teams a chance to redeem themselves and catch up, as I’m sure we can all agree we don’t want any more teams dropping out. We kindly ask that the below listed teams contact the NHL Gamer Staff with an update on their situation; are there any problems? Do you need help? Are you committed to finishing the season? Please send a PM here on the community forums to @Kenu, @Lurkins, @The_Alpha_Furyan, @gzell60 and @Ranksu. Thank you. Bone Breakers – Group 2 – 25 games played Free From Rodents – Group 2 – 29 games played ICE BROS – Group 2 – 28 games played EN HUND – Group 2 – 28 games played (The teams leaving and thus having their games nullified might be the reason for the low amount of games played, and if that is the case, that is a valid excuse,) So there you have it! A whole lot of things have been on the staff desk and honestly, the above is just the tip of the ice berg. We’d like to reiterate that we’re very happy about the initiative that many teams have taken in the past few weeks to handle issues on their own. This is much appreciated and the way we want the community to develop. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Hopefully we can make it shorter next time. On behalf of the NHL Gamer staff,

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 NHLGamers, As the days are growing colder and we move closer to fall, every hockey fan knows what’s coming - days and nights filled with the greatest sport on earth, be it SHL, SM-Liiga, KHL, NHL or even online gaming in the EASHL. With the release of NHL 17 and the 2016 World Cup right around the corner, hockey has never been hotter. Here at NHLGamer.com we are looking forward to the next installment in the European Championship League (ECL 3 – see thread here) – the premier league for NHL online EASHL gaming – and we hope you guys are excited as well. But before we turn the page in the tournament book and open up a new chapter, it’s time to close an older one first. I am talking specifically about NHL 16 and the ECL tournaments played on it. ECL 1 ECL 1 was a resounding success, lifted by the fact that the whole community that had previously been divided on different sides of the console pond, so to speak, were finally re-united on the PS4. This led to ECL 1 being one of the most competitive tournaments in european EASHL history, with newcomers battling old foes and ”Xbox teams” clashing with ”PS teams” for a long, gruesome regular season followed by an intense playoffs where Nordic Blizzard eventually stood tall. You can check out our summary of ECL 1, here. ECL 2 ECL 2 followed up on the success of ECL 1 with a tighter, more focused schedule due to ECL 1 having been kicked off late in the NHL season, around christmas. From the start, having another tournament on the NHL 16 platform wasn’t a guarantee but community demand made sure no more than a month passed between tournaments. For this tournament, rivalries had started to set in and some top teams were disbanded with players migrating to new hunting grounds. In the end, ECL 2 was an exciting way to finish off the season and Mukimiehet were crowned as winners. You can read about ECL 2, here. ECL Summer Cup Which brings us to the ECL Summer Cup. Not part of the regular ECL lineup and once again inspired by community demand and some very creative and interesting ideas (special shout-out to the community members who took initiative, you know who you are), the ECL Summer Cup was a totally new format which began in the middle of the summer with a fantasy draft and ended just before the release of NHL 17. The idea was to give NHL gamers a chance to make friends on different teams and also some incentive to keep their EASHL skills sharp during what is usually a slow time for hockey gaming, the summer. While I can’t speak for everyone, I think most people had a blast during this tournament. I know I did – all the way from getting drafted to playing with some entirely new teammates to our teams eventual demise in the second round of the playoffs. As ECL 1 & 2 have already had their separate book closings with news stories of their own, announcing the winners and thanking everyone for their participation – this will be the closing of the book of the ECL Summer Cup. A total of 14 teams entered, who were then split into two groups of 7. Of these 7 teams, 4 from each group would go on to make the playoffs. The quarter- and semifinals were each played in a best of-3 format to make sure the tournament would be played on time, followed by a best of-7 finals. In the end, we were left with somewhat of an upset! The #4 seed from Group 1, Team pelimies80, made the playoffs by a hair and then went on to defeat Mirage (Quarter), Mighty 8 Balls (Semi) and lastly Hupimunat in the finals. Congratulations to Team pelimies80! I’ll leave you with the words of team captain, @pelimies80: Missing games Next order of business is once again reminding all the captains that there are still some unreported games for the Summer Cup, both regular season and playoffs. Now, while we know we here at the NHLGamer staff dropped the ball on a few occasions (the website being down for an extended period of time, not getting all the proper information out on time and not having a proper playoff tree in place) we still require you captains to fulfill your obligations and report the remaining games. We are only human, and we know you are too, so this isn’t intended to place blame – instead we have taken the time to list all the games that remain unreported, to make it easier on you to find them. Regular season @debi_85 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1289 @FINSeRe http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1348 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1349 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1341 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1342 @mir02k1 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1362 Playoffs @debi_85 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1351 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1356 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1355 @FINSeRe http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1361 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1360 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1359 @Joonas Paatiala http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1357 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1358 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1372 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1374 http://nhlgamer.com/match.php?matchID=1375 Awards Last but not least, awards. The most highely coveted individual award, the ECL Summer Cup playoff MVP, will be given to @Foppatofflan. This first round draft pick didnt show up for more than a few games in the regular season but made up for it in the playoffs. With 10+18 for 28 points in 13 games AND with the endorsement of the captain of his Summer Cup winning Team pelimies80, this one was a no-brainer. Congratulations Foppatofflan! While I’m sad to report that my personal dream of having judgement-based awards for the rest of the Summer Cup has been put on ice for now (only about half of the 14 captains gave me a list of who they thought was worthy of each of the trophies suggested in THIS earlier post), I am proud to once again present the regular season stat-based awards for the ECL Summer Cup – but also a compilation of stats retroactively for ECL 1 & 2. Enjoy and see you on the ice in NHL 17 for ECL 3! (If I haven't tagged a player, it's because I couldn't find that player on the community side - probably due to having a different name there than his player card/gamertag) ECL 1: Most Points - @Joukki with 55 goals and 36 assists for a whopping 91 points in 22 games. A margin of 17 points down to the next best skater Puantso - impressive. Most Goals - @Joukki again with 55 goals in 22 games – with 8 PPG, 0 SHG and 5 GWG. Most Assists - Puantso with 49 assists in just 20 games played. Most Points by a Defenseman - @Chrisbernt with 10+30 = 40 in 24 games played. Chris did play around 6-8 games as forward but with over 75% of his games as a defender, he still qualifies! Best Plus/Minus - @Joukki just edges out his teammate @vatalisti with +61 to vatas +59. Great work by Carlsberg HC Best Save % - For this award we set a limit of atleast 50% of the teams games played, meaning atleast 12 games out of 24. Just qualifiying is OveikkoO of team Kattiautomatti with 85.08 % in 12 games. Most Wins by a Goalie - @vepe- wins this one with 19 wins in 22 games played. A good awards season for Carlsberg HC. ECL 2: Most Points - @Tapparafan from Nordic Stars swoops this award up with 28 goals and 11 assists for 39 points in 10 games. Great work! Most Goals - Mr. @Tapparafan collects this one as well with the above mentioned 28 goals in 10 games – this with 8 PPG, 1 SHG and 5 GWG. Most Assists - @Basstian23 ties @FlyerKungen with 20 assists each – these two gentlemen will split the trophy! Most Points by a Defenseman - @vatalisti wins this one with 5+16 for 21 points in 9 games. Best Plus/Minus - Another season, another win for @Joukki with +30. This season he has to share it with teammates @vatalisti and KingOfApes_ who also finished the season with +30. Best Save % - @OxtreeLAT wins this one with a magnificent 89.74% save percentage in 10 games. Could this be the record to beat for future ECL tournaments? Most Wins by a Goalie - A three-way tie between the above mentioned @OxtreeLAT, @FINSeRe and @poliskontroll who each ended the season with 8 wins in 10 games. ECL SC: Most Points - @selänne8 with 14 goals and 20 assists for a total of 34 points in 12 games. Very impressive, congratulations to you Finnish Flash! Most Goals - @plee999 with a staggering 17 goals in just 10 games played. Well done! Most Assists - @selänne8 again with 20 assists in 12 games. Quite the playmaker! Most Points by a Defenseman - @The_Alpha_Furyan with 4 goals and 17 assists for 21 points in 10 games. Playing on a great team helps, thank you teammates! Best Plus/Minus - @Joonas Paatiala with +17 in 10 games. Tied with Plee but he already won the goals award so, this one is for Patzlaf. Best Save % - @juha96 with 73.38 % in 12 games. Was awarded to @FINSeRe earlier but with just 6 games reported for his team, this moves to juha96. Most Wins by a Goalie - @OxtreeLAT with 8 wins in 12 games. A winning percentage over 70% while playing all the teams games? The definition of reliable! Comments, as always, are much appreciated! On behalf of the NHLGamer Staff, The_Alpha_Furyan

Hey NHLGamers, today we are bringing you the overall player ratings that the team over at EA Sports has released so far, check it out; First up is the Top-10 Centers 10. Claude Giroux 91 9. Nicklas Bäckström 91 8. Ryan Getzlaf 91 7. Tyler Seguin 92 6. Evgeni Malkin 93 5. John Tavares 93 4. Anze Kopitar 93 3. Steven Stamkos 94 2. Jonathan Toews 94 1. Sidney Crosby 95 Next we got Top-10 Defensemen 10. Dustin Byfuglien 91 9. P.K. Subban 91 8. Marc-Edouard Vlasic 91 7. Victor Hedman 92 6. Brent Burns 92 5. Erik Karlsson 92 4. Ryan Suter 93 3. Duncan Keith 93 2. Shea Weber 94 1. Drew Doughty 94 Next is Top-10 Goalies 10. Ben Bishop 89 9. Tuuka Rask 89 8. Marc-Andre Fleury 90 7. Corey Crawford 90 6. Pekka Rinne 91 5. Cory Schneider 91 4. Henrik Lundqvist 92 3. Braden Holtby 92 2. Jonathan Quick 93 1. Carey Price 93 Next to last is Top-10 Right Wingers 10. James Neal 88 9. Nikita Kucherov 88 8. Marian Hossa 88 7. Blake Wheeler 89 6. Phil Kessel 89 5. Jakub Voracek 90 4. Corey Perry 91 3. Joe Pavelski 91 2. Vladimir Tarasenko 93 1. Patrick Kane 94 Lastly, we got Top-10 Left Wingers 10. Alexander Steen 88 9. Gabriel Landeskog 88 8. Filip Forsberg 88 7. Daniel Sedin 88 6. Zach Parise 89 5. Max Pacioretty 89 4. Johnny Gaudreau 90 3. Taylor Hall 90 2. Alex Ovechkin 94 1. Jamie Benn 94 That's all we've got for you this time folks, but if you'd like to check out the Top-50 Skaters Overall, regardless of position, check out https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2016/nhl-17-player-ratings-top-50-overall over at EA Sports official website. As always, feel free to comment! Do you agree with these ratings? Was someone rated way too high/too low? Sound off below! Later skaters, The_Alpha_Furyan

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! 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 NHLGamers, today we're bringing you a boatload of additional news on EASHL for NHL 17 through EA's own Gameplay Series. Tip of the hat to @vSilenttio for bringing this to our attention! Here are the main talking points (in EA:s own words); EASHL Team Editor Use the all-new team customization tool in Creation Zone to make your team into a brand by editing your team’s uniform, pants, socks, shoulder patches and logos to build your unique EASHL team identity. With thousands of different possible combinations, this is your chance to make your team stand out from the rest of the hockey world. EASHL Arena Progression As you play games in EASHL you will level up your club to earn more arena customization options. When you first create your team, you’ll have access to two brand new community rinks which are only available in EASHL. From there you can unlock larger arenas as well as customize options like scoreboards, goal songs, LED stanchions, horns and more. As your team gains more experience and unlocks more customizable options, your team arena can evolve from a low-tech community rink to the latest NHL-caliber arena. *You will be able to use the Create Team/Create Arena feature outside of EASHL and that will not need you to unlock said content. EASHL Arena Types Small Community Rink: A practice-sized rink without bleachers or seats. This rink is truly grass-roots and does not allow for any customization. Large Community Rink: This rink can hold a small set of hometown fans and allows for a moderate amount of customization, such as branding your team logo at center ice and having goal horns and songs play after goals. Junior Arena: Large enough to seat several thousand fans and allows for a significant amount of customization such as entry props and LED stanchion effects. Semi-Pro Stadium: Here is when you start to feel like a professional hockey team. A semi-pro stadium allows for a larger capacity crowd and even more customization options. Pro Stadium: There are 10 different pro stadiums to unlock and these allow for the biggest crowds and the most amount of customization options such as scoreboards and signature effects. Player Classes Returning to EA SPORTS Hockey League in NHL 17 is the ability to choose specialized player classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. A good team should have a mix of these player classes, with each contributing to a team's success in different ways. This class system helps deliver a balanced competitive experience on the ice, where player skill and your ability to play as a team now determines who wins and loses hockey games. We will be using the NHL 17 Beta to tune both earlier and new player classes, so make sure to give feedback during the beta. Forward Player Classes Sniper Forward Power Forward Playmaker Forward Grinder Forward Enforcer Forward Two Way Forward Dangler Hitting Sniper *NEW Jumbo Playmaker *NEW Two Way Dangler *NEW Defensive Player Classes Offensive Defenseman Defensive Defenseman Two Way Defenseman Enforcer Defenseman Puck Moving Defenseman *NEW Goalie Classes Butterfly Goalie Stand-Up Goalie Hybrid Goalie Anti-Griefing Improvements To make our EASHL online experience as fun and accessible as possible, we’ve listened to community feedback from our social channels and forums and will be implementing the following anti-grieving features for NHL 17. Goalies Quitting - In EASHL Club games, any game started with two (2) human goalies requires those goalies to finish the game otherwise their team is given a loss. For Drop-in games, any team that has their goalie leave is then replaced with a backup goalie who is smaller and has a lower skill rating to level the playing field. Improving Team Play - For drop-in games, our Coach Feedback System will keep tabs on your team play grade for skaters and goalies. If you aren't being a good team player and are intentionally creating a poor playing environment for other players the coach may boot you from the game. Examples of creating a poor playing environment are: going intentionally offside, continuously icing the puck, removing goalies from the net, etc. Reduced Number of Pauses - We have reduced pauses to one (1) per team regardless of mode or the number of players on the team. Each team will have one (1) 30 second pause. This will not consume your regular timeout that refreshes your lines. We have also surfaced the visual settings option in the limited pause menu so you don’t have to use your full pause to make those last-minute camera adjustments. We recommend you make those settings changes in the EASHL HUB so they are active for every EASHL game you play. Reduced Grace Period Before the Game Counts – Once the puck drops the game is officially on! Any teams that quit as this point earns a loss, while the team still playing earns the win. General EASHL Improvements Drop-In Games Improved Matchmaking - New to NHL 17, select the general position you would like to play before starting your matchmaking search. This will help bring players together and allow them to play their desired position. Matchmaking will also factor in your Competitive Gaming Rating to help find the best balance of skill and experience for both teams. Group Matchmaking - Introducing the new Drop-in Dressing Room that now allows you to invite up to five (5) other friends to join your team for a cooperative yet competitive experience against other drop-in players. Persistent Game Sessions - Players from the same team will stay in a Dressing Room after the end of each EASHL Drop-In game, to help improve consistency and chemistry between players. Online Connection Connection Quality Bar - Connection quality bar will now be highlighted in the pre-game matchup screen. Real Time Connection Quality - A real-time connection graph will now be highlighted in the pause menu and will show your connection quality from the last two minutes of game time. Game Server Selection - We will automatically find which game server is best for your entire team based on their ping times to each game server. Club Invitations Club GMs can now invite players to join their club by manually entering their friend’s profile names or by selecting a profile name in different in-game locations such as leaderboards or the Drop-in Dressing Room. Club GMs can effectively use Drop-in to scout players and recruit them to join their team. Viewing Club Rosters You can now select to view another club’s roster from within our Leaderboards screens and Recent Games screens. Source: https://www.easports.com/nhl/news/2016/nhl-17-gameplay-series-eashl // NHLGamer Staff

Fellow NHLGamers, You can tell EA is ramping up the PR-machine for the Beta release of NHL 17 because today we have a new trailer for you! A few things to take away from this EASHL-related trailer - The customization options seem limitless! Everything from jerseys to arenas to goal songs to scoring lamps... the list goes on. This is a sorely needed re-introduction to the EASHL community. - Customization options are earned. As your team wins and levels up, you gets access to more and more different features. - Perhaps the biggest reveal from this trailer; four new player classes! Let's take a look at them. Dangler - Already introduced in the later stages of NHL 16 but to those who left the game around spring, this will be a "new" class. Suited for players who performs with small, fast, shifty players. Probably modeled after Johnny Gaudreau of the Calgary Flames. Jumbo Playmaker - This one is for the playmakers out there who haven't been happy with the size and strength of the regular playmaker class. The regular class will still be in the game but this jumbo class (quite obviously modeled after San Jose Sharks "Jumbo" Joe Thornton) will be able to take a hit and still make a play. Hitting Sniper - Basically Alex Ovechkin. Enough said. Two-Way Dangler - This one is interesting because it seems to be a defensive class in style but with very good puck skills. Very likely inspired by previous NHLer Pavel Datsyuk (We miss you, Dats!). Anyway, that's that! Let us know what you think of this new EASHL-focused trailer in the comment section below! Later skaters // The_Alpha_Furyan

Fellow NHLGamers, Today we're bringing you the new trailer for NHL 17, titled "Control The Ice". Narrated by NHL series producer Sean Ramjagsingh, this trailer takes a closer look at what NHL 17 will bring in terms of net battles, puck pickups, goalie movement and celebrations. Enjoy: A few things to take away from this: - Net battles have the potential to make us defenders competitive in front of the net again. I can tell you it's been quite frustrating as an offensive defenseman trying to wrestle big powerforwards in front of the net in NHL 16. Giving the defender the option to ever so slightly lift the forwards stick could go a long way towards evening out the odds. This could of course also give the forwards some new looks, being able to spin off tie-ups to go for deflections etc. - Goalie animations are again a focus for the team at EA. This time, it looks like they've tried to make sure you have different options as a goalie, either by relying on positioning and "being in the way" of the shot or by relying on athletic moves and timing. Either way, goalies do look good in this trailer. - Better puck dynamics for smoother pickups and better pass reception. - Improved "hit targeting". - Improved pivoting, accelation and agility for skating. - New celebrations so you can be even more of a turd towards your opponents - always welcome, right? Let us know what you think of the new trailer in the comment section below! Later skaters // The_Alpha_Furyan

Hey NHL Gamers, As you may have noticed from our previous news article, EA Sports released a trailer for NHL 17 today. In case you missed it, we've embedded it below for you! We have already taken apart the first 'Vision' trailer for the upcoming NHL 17, and we made a few interesting findings - which we want to share with you! Please note: You can click on each screenshot to see them in full size! 1) Custom EASHL logos and jerseys are back The screenshot above shows an unknown team logo, which suggests it is a self-made one for EASHL. As it does not make sense to use custom logos with existing jerseys (licensing etc.), we highly expect custom jerseys to be back, too. 2) Customizable arenas Above screenshots show different arena designs with the same fantasy logo on the right hand side, which makes us believe that EASHL teams will be able to customize their own arenas to some extent. At a quick glance the screenshots may look like they are the same one over and over again, but when you look closely, you can see a difference in seat colors. 3) Tie-ups could return The trailer includes a longer snippet of 2 players motion-capturing tie-ups in front of the net. Considering they have been scratched in the PS4 and Xbox One versions of NHL 15 and 16, they could finally return for NHL 17. 4) New 'Trade in' feature for Hockey Ultimate Team The above screenshot shows a menu screen of Hockey Ultimate Team, titled 'Gold Coach Trade In'. The description says: "Complete this set by turning in any 10 Gold Coach items for a Gold Trophy Pack, which contains at least 1 Gold Trophy." We believe that EA created a new trade-in system that allows you to trade existing cards, which you draw from packs or bought off the auction house, for new packs of the same class. However, we are unsure what Gold Trophies are or allow you to do. 5) World Cup of Hockey is included We were hoping and expecting it would be in the game, but here is the confirmation - NHL 17 features the new World Cup of Hockey! 6) New celebrations The trailer concludes with several snippets of new goal celebrations, which means they replaced / updated some of the old ones or also added a few new ones. 6) New menus The game menu has received what we'd consider a major facelift. It looks very sleek, clean and what could hopefully result in a more smooth user experience; as we all know, the previous iterations of the menus have been quite sluggish to use. Apart from new animations or updated training arenas for EASHL, this is all we were able to catch. We will keep you updated with future developments about NHL 17, and expect major news to drop during the next E3 which takes places in Los Angeles from June 14 to June 16! What did you think about the trailer? Did you notice something we didn't? Please let us know in the comments below!

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!