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Hey NHLGamers, Earlier this week EA SPORTS hosted a NHL 19 pre-launch event in Stockholm where invited guests got the opportunity to play the game before the upcoming release. This time it was me being lucky to attend at the event during the NHL 19 Producers Tour. Other NHLGamers attending were @The_Alpha_Furyan, @Darkic01 and @PillenUpp. I got the chance to interview the lead producer of the NHL Franchise, Sean Ramjagsingh. First off, I took the time to tell him that me and many others enjoyed the NHL 19 Beta a lot. I gave them credit for the skating in the game and for making the bots less overpowered. "Yeah, I agree. The bot stuff is mostly based on feedback from our fans. We started to change the behaviour of the bots when people played super conservative letting the bots do all the work. So we knew we had to make them more balanced", Ramjagsingh responded to NHLGamer.com at the NHL 19 event in Stockholm. Continue reading for the entire interview! Esdor: "How are EA going to promote NHL as an esport in the future?" Ramjagsingh: "We are still relatively new in the world of competitive gaming. We are pushing forward with Madden and FIFA right now but we took our first step this year with the World Gaming Championship. The NHL was in charge of that. This first tournament was mainly about testing and learning for us about how to host a big event. We got great feedback from the players participating. We got a feeling for the appetite of competitive gaming within the NHL Community. We were able to launch it in multiple different territories in North America and Europe as well. We got loads of feedback from the fans about what they want to see, what modes we should be using. Versus, Hockey Ultimate Team or EA SPORTS Hockey League. Now we will put our heads together with the NHL to figure out what is next." Esdor: "Is there an option to have one tournament in Versus and one in EASHL for example?" Ramjagsingh: "It's a great question. Tbd (to be determined) is probably the answer right now. We are still trying to figure out what our plan is moving forward. I think we saw great success with the individual versus experience, but when you look at what our community wants right now we see a lot of our core players asking for 6v6. When there are no bots involved, it's truly skill versus skill in that mode. We take all that into consideration as we build up our plans for the future." Esdor: "Have you considered hosting a tournament at an event like Dreamhack?" Ramjagsingh: "Tournaments is something that we look at when we decide about our competitive gaming strategy. All kind of tournaments kind of fall under competitive gaming - not only the World Gaming Championship -, but also smaller community tournaments, and tournaments for casual players as well." Esdor: "Will there be a challenge team option for playing 3v3 games in EASHL?" Ramjagsingh: "We are working on that right now. It's not there when the game is released, but it's on our roadmap for the upcoming months." Esdor: "Will the division packs be better this year in HUT?" Ramjagsingh: "We actually started fresh this year with a lot of our economy redesigned, and pack contents are a part of that. This year we are starting our players much much lower so there is more room to grow. We have reworked the content that is in all of our packs. So you can essentially get any of our best players from any pack available." Esdor: "Will you make it easier to apply many contracts at the same time in HUT?" Ramjagsingh: "We made some improvements there as well, to the contracts and the healing cards." Esdor: "Am I able to do giveaways as a streamer?" Ramjagsingh: "Giveaways are tbd. I don't have the latest information on that to let you know. I'm not sure where we stand at the moment when it comes to giveaways. The piece that we got to be careful is about the trades. Because people will exploit stuff if they can. It's not necessarily the streamers doing giveaways we want to find, it's more about the guys that abuse the system that we need to be careful with." Esdor: "Are wager matches possibly coming back again in the future?" Ramjagsingh: "No. We still stand by that - it's the gambling part of it that we want to stay away from." Esdor: "Have you thought about adding a logic that kicks idle players from HUT and Versus games?" Ramjagsingh: "We get that question a lot. Definitely something that we are looking at. We have been talking about players going idle in all different game modes, not just for Hockey Ultimate Team." Esdor: "Will you be able to see your opponents username before starting a match?" Ramjagsingh: "Yes you will. It's a challenge for us to make it work when people are dodging so much. People want to pick and choose their spots in some kind of try to maximize their time playing the game without taking losses. What we have done though is improving the matchmaking system. So hopefully you will get matched with someone that is at a similar skill level." Esdor: "What about cross-play between consoles when it comes to NHL?" Ramjagsingh: "That is up to Sony and Microsoft to decide. We are starting to see games like Fortnite making cross-platform possible, but that is a bigger conversation with our first party partners and not something that we can change on our own." Esdor: "Why is NHL not using the Frostbite engine like FIFA and Madden?" Ramjagsingh: "We will get there eventually. Moving over to Frostbite is almost like a console transition. It's a massive technology change. We are able to learn from FIFA and their transition to Frostbite, so we can have a smoother journey when we move over to Frostbite too. From a company perspective it's our one engine strategy, so it's just a matter of time. Now we are laying the ground work so we can hopefully get there in the near future." Esdor: "Why is there no feature that allows you to play a league together with your online friends?" Ramjagsingh: "It's something that we have heard from a lot of our fans actually, asking for tournaments or a feature where you can set up a league that track stats and things like that. This is something that we have on our to do list but there is no ETA (estimated time of arrival) yet. It is definitely something that we are looking into in the future." Esdor: "How come you can't take a timeout without going into the menus?" Ramjagsingh: "We are out of buttons, that is the main reason. There is not a faster way for us to do that. It's not ideal but we are just out of buttons." BarreBoza, @Darkic01, @esdor, Sean "Rammer" Ramjagsingh, Evan Dexter and @PillenUpp in Stockholm That's it from Stockholm, but stay tuned for our coverage from Helsinki, which should be dropping in the next few days! For NHLGamer.com @esdor

Hi fellow NHLGamers. Like many of you guys know the IS Cup was played about a week ago in Helsinki. I want to say thanks to everyone involved and to all the Finnish guys in the community that made me feel very welcome. Now to the more important stuff, the actual gaming. On the first day of the tournament, players that did not make it to the main tournament through the online qualifiers had a chance to qualify. 64 players got divided into two different knockout brackets. The winner of the first bracket was hardly surprising, as on top came @Dominointi after beating @Rimpe in the final. In the other bracket a more (to me) unknown player made it all the way to the group stage of the IS Cup Finals. @MUFASAN-VALITTU won the second bracket after beating Kaneyh (@Kane) in the final. The final 16 competed in the IS Cup Finals on Saturday and the first phase was for the TOP 8 to make it through the group stage. The 16 players were split into four groups and below is how things went down: Group stage Group 1: In my opinion this group was the group of death. I_Eki_I (@Erkki) had a lot of pressure going into the tournament after finishing second in the eSM (Finnish Championships) and after beating @willekunq in the final of the online qualifier. I_Eki_I got a very good start in the first game against Dominointi with an early 4-0 lead that Dominointi never managed to recover from. I_Eki_I won the game 6-3. Dominointi got his revenge on @xDoumi after losing to him in the online qualifiers but that game was not the most important in their careers since both of them were out already after losing to @SadaPoika and I_Eki_I. Sadapoika impressed me by beating Dominointi as well and won the group after beating I_Eki_I in the last game with a score of 4-3. Group 2: In this group I expected @Hansulinho to win comfortably, but I was so wrong. Hansulinho lost his first game 6-4 to @Dreamickie and @Leksa94 lost his first game to @Nikeez98 3-2. SJK eSports teammates Hansulinho and Leksa94 were now up against each other in a game that would mean that one of them were out of the tournament. Leksa had the lead until there was only 2,3 seconds left of the game. It was unreal how Hansulinho was only 2,3 seconds away from being eliminated. It´s even more impressive the way he scored in that crucial moment. Hansu scored a spectacular goal after a difficult saucer pass when he tied the game 2-2. Hansu managed to win the game in overtime. Dreamickie impressed and won the group after a perfect 3 wins. Hansulinho joined Dreammickie into the top 8 knockouts after beating Nikeez98 5-0 in their last game of the group stage. Group 3: The Finnish Champion @eskoeinari managed to win this group after an impressive 3 straight wins. Buranaburana (@[email protected]) followed him into the playoffs after beating both @Kim_20_00_ and @JaKurrii. It was great to see the skill of the players participating in live-tournaments and to see that there are so many good players, for example JaKurri made it to the semifinals in eSM but now in IS Cup he did not manage to win any of the three group stage games. Group 4: This group was the one that I had the least knowledge about upfront. I must say that I am impressed by MUFASAN-VALITTU winning this group after he secured his spot the day before. MUFASAN-VALITTU did participate in the eSM but he did not make it to the top 8 in that tournament. @Kemppane_ took the other top 8 spot from group 4 after beating @kojowaa 4-1. Quarterfinals In the first quarterfinal Hansulinho beat Sadapoika 2-0 in games after winning the second game 4-3 in OT. The most entertaining quarterfinal was between Dreamickie and I_Eki_I. Dreamickie managed to win the first game 5-3. The second game in the series was the craziest game in this tournament I would say. Dreammickie managed to come back into the game after being down 3-1. With around 4 minutes left Dreammickie scored 6-5 that was so close of being the game series winning goal, but somehow I_Eki_I managed to equalize with only 13 seconds left. I_Eki_I won the game in OT after being very close to be out of the tournament. In the third game I_Eki_I won the game 4-2 to secure his spot in the semifinals. In the third quarterfinal the Finnish champion eskoeinari beat Kemppane 2-0 in games after two close games (3-2, 4-2). Last quarterfinal was played between MUFASAN-VALITTU and buranaburana. The first game of the series was very close. buranaburana had the 3-1 lead, but MUFASAN-VALITTU made it back into the game and took the game into OT. In the OT buranaburana scored to make the series 1-0 in his favor. buranaburana won the second game with the same result 4-3 in regulation time. 2-0 in the series for buranaburana took him to the semifinals. Semifinals First out in the semfinals was the series between buranaburana and eskoeinari. The question was if buranaburana was going to get revenge against eskoeinari after losing to him in the semfinal of the eSM. The answer was no. Exactly like in eSM, the series went to a third game where eskoeinari was able to win and go through to the final. eskoeinari won 2-1 in game 3. The second semifinal between the 5x Finnish champion Hansulinho and I_Eki_I was going to be something special. In Hansulinho's latest live apperance he lost the semifinal against Pleemaker in the IS Cup last year. I_Eki_I has become very experienced at events like this after being in the final of both the eSM and the IS Cup last year. I_Eki_I managed to win game 1 with 5-4 in OT. After that Hansu won two straight games with 3-1 that took him to the final. Final The reigning Finnish champion Eskoeinari against the five-time former Finnish champion Hansulinho. I was hoping for a series that would go to game 3 but Hansulinho wanted something else. Hansulinho won both finals with the score of 4-2. In the second game Hansulinho found Crosby in the perfect spot to make it 3-2 in the game, that goal was the game winning goal that made Hansulinho the Champion of IS Cup this year. Enjoy the short after movie that was made by Ilta-Sanomat of this event. Below you can find the final results of the IS Cup 2 Final tournament: Place Player Prize 1. Hannes "Hansulinho" Kettunen 2000 € 2. Juho "eskoeinari" Sillantaus 1000 € 3.-4. Erik "I_EKI_I" Tammenpää 500 € 3.-4. Sami "buranaburana" Piiparinen 500 € 5.-8. Jim "Sadapoika" Leskinen 250 € 5.-8. Vesa "Dreamickie" Rajamäki 250 € 5.-8. Jesse "MUFASAN_VALITTU" Ruuskanen 250 € 5.-8. Juuso "Kemppane_" Kemppainen 250 € 9.-12. Juho "kojowaa" Törmälä 125 € 9.-12. Kim "Kim_20_00" Suokas 125 € 9.-12. Nikolas "Nikeez98" Hämäläinen 125 € 9.-12. Risto "Dominointi" Järvi 125 € 13.-16. Aaro "xDoumi" Ruuhinen 125 € 13.-16. Leo "Leksa94" Torri 125 € 13.-16. Jussi "JaKurrii" Koivuniemi 125 € 13.-16. Antero "xSelanne8x" Enbuske 125 € We want to thank the players and everyone who showed up to enjoy themselves and show their support. Together we are strong, so let this only be the beginning! Text by: @esdor Edited by: @Kenu Video: Ilta-Sanomat (Sorry for the poor quality of the group photo, we don't know why a potato was used to take this photo. Also, next time, let's get everyone in there!)