Ready for hockey? The NHL’s first set of virtual games debut this week, but will not be featuring the New York Rangers. They still will be worth checking out.
The NHL is trying to keep fans engaged in hockey so they have partnered with EA Games and ESL Gaming to stage a series of matches featuring actual NHL players at the controls playing NHL20. It’s called the NHL Player Gaming Challenge and the New York Rangers will be represented by Chris Kreider though Blueshirts fans will have to wait a while before they can see their “virtual” heroes play.
The series will feature 16 head-to-head match ups over four weeks with 50 NHL players participating. They will be playing from their homes where they are in isolation and they will be using Sony PlayStation 4 gaming consoles.
The first two games will be played on Thursday, April 30 at 5pm and will feature matches between the Calgary Flames versus the Ottawa Senators and the Pittsburgh Penguins versus the Dallas Stars.
On Saturday, May 2, the Nashville Predators will take on the Colorado Avalanche at 3pm.
You can watch all of these games on a number of digital platforms including Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook Premier and NHL.com. Thursday’s matches will be carried live on NBC Sports Network.
Rangers connections
Okay, it may be a reach to call this hockey and to expect a Rangers fan to be excited by a video game between Calgary and Ottawa may be a bit much, but there are some tenuous connections to the Blueshirts.
Calgary vs Ottawa – Former Ranger Cam Talbot is the back up goalie for the Flames and may see action in this game. The Senators feature ex-Rangers Artem Anisimov and Anthony Duclair and at the controls for Ottawa will be Brady Tkachuk who played for Rangers coach David Quinn at B.U.
Pittsburgh vs Dallas – Finding any connection to the Rangers is tough with this game. We’ll stretch and point out that Penguins coach Mike Sullivan is a former Rangers draft pick and assistant coach. Also, Zach Aston-Reese will be teamed with Bryan Rust at the controls for Pittsburgh and Aston-Reese was born on Staten Island.
Nashville vs Colorado – The Predators connection to the Rangers is via family as Jarred Tinordi is the son of former Rangers defenseman Mark Tinordi. As for Colorado, you can root for ex-Ranger Vlad Namestnikov and also for former draft pick Ryan Graves, also known as “the one that got away.”
Should we care?
Considering that hockey these days consists of watching replays on television or reading some relatively inane twitter content, it will be interesting to see exactly how they stage these games. League of Legends tournaments routinely draw thousands of fans and millions of live streams and it remains to be seen how they will be using the real life players as participants. ESL Gaming is the preeminent platform for esports tournaments so they should know what they are doing.
So, give it a shot this Thursday and maybe it will help fill the void of a hockey-less world. If not, you can always watch the Rangers overtime win over Toronto from December 28 on the MSG Network on Friday at 1pm EST.