NHL announces month-long 31-team Player Gaming Challenge in NHL 20
By Mike Zawisza
While the NHL continues to work on potential resumption dates for the season, the league announced a temporary, virtual solution to hold fans over in the meantime.
With the NHL season still in limbo due to COVID-19, the league announced its plans for the NHL Player Gaming Challenge set to begin at the end of the month. Players representing all 31 teams will play against each other in EA Sports’ NHL 20 during a four-week tournament beginning April 30.
Notable players include Evgeny Kuznetsov for the Washington Capitals, Filip Forsberg of the Nashville Predators and brothers Brady Tkachuk and Matthew Tkachuk for Ottawa and Calgary respectively. Seattle will even take part in the tournament with Luke Willson from the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL representing the league’s newest club. The full lineup can be found here.
Los Angeles Kings play-by-play announcer Alex Faust will call the tournament, which will be broadcast over multiple streaming platforms including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook Premiere. Some featured matchups will even see airtime on NBC Sports and NHL Network.
This is a pretty savvy move by the league considering how popular streaming and esports have become in recent years. There’s also a decent amount of evidence to support that the Player Gaming Challenge will be a hit, given that over 300,000 people tuned in to watch Wayne Gretzky and Alex Ovechkin play a charity series of NHL 20 matches this week.
Throughout the quarantine, teams have broadcasted simulated games on NHL 20 to fans and many players have already begun streaming their own gameplays as well. It’ll be interesting to see if this is something the league would even consider hosting annually moving forward.
Though it can’t quench the thirst of actual, real life hockey, this tournament is an intuitive and interactive way for the league to showcase some of its personalities and allow fans to engage with the sport and its players in a different way. Also, it’s for a good cause as the National Hockey League Foundation and Electronic Arts (EA) will donate $100,000 to the CDC’s COVID-19 relief efforts.
Next. Gretzky, Ovechkin played a charity NHL 20 series. dark
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