“NHL Player Gaming Challenge” week 2…meh

It’s the second week of the NHL Player Gaming Challenge. While the New York Rangers won’t be playing this week, is it worth watching?  Unfortunately, it’s a pretty lame substitute for the real thing.

The NHL Player Gaming Challenge is the league’s effort to get fans engaged by staging a series of hockey matches pitting NHL players against each other.  The New York Rangers will be represented by Chris Kreider, but the Blueshirts are not on the week two schedule.

This Thursday will feature the Boston Bruins, represented by Charlie McAvoy and Jake DeBrusk playing the Arizona Coyotes, controlled by Conor Garland & Clayton Keller.

Saturday, Jonathan Huberdeau will be at the controls for the Florida Panthers, taking on the Washington Capitals, represented by  Evgeny Kuznetsov.

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.

This is the second week of the series that will feature 16 head-to-head match ups over four weeks with 50 NHL players participating.  They will be playing from their homes on Sony PlayStation 4 gaming consoles.

How was it?

First off, these are not live contests.  They are edited down so they can get three full hockey games finished in one hour.  It’s not the most scintillating of spectator sports unless your idea of a good time is watching a screen with tiny hockey players and two to four webcams featuring an NHL player playing the video game.

For the most part, this feature of the NHL’s #HockeyAtHome initiative really doesn’t work. The league clearly felt that the attraction was the chirping between the players and while some of it is entertaining, most of it is pretty lame.

The games are hard to follow and when the players are intent on the game they don’t say much.  There is an occasional revelation when they are talking about their teammates and their habits, but those nuggets are few and far between.

More from Blue Line Station

• Blake Wheeler’s Broadway Calling: Why He Chose the Rangers
• Rangers’ Playoff Redemption Recipe: Grit and Fresh Hopes
• Rangers’ Roster Chatter: Who’s Making the Cut and Who’s in the Penalty Box?
• Jacque Plante Trade Tree Between the Rangers and Canadiens
• These Rangers must learn Peter Laviolette’s ropes before they can fly

Los Angeles Kings play-by-play announcer Alex Faust is supposed to be the host of the livestreams and according to the NHL, his mission is to “keep players engaged in dialogue and not get too swept up in their efforts to come out as the winners.”  One recommendation for Faust would be for him to look directly into the camera when he is on camera. When they take a three shot of the players and Faust we are looking at three guys looking at computer screens.  As I said, scintillating.

The problem is the folks staging this event had to decide what’s more important, listening to two hockey players talk to each other while playing a video game or the game itself.  From the title of the story on the NHL website, it’s obvious what they picked.  “NHL Player Gaming Challenge to showcase chirping, friendship.”  With the focus on the “chirping” the game itself becomes background noise.

Some suggestions

To be fair, the quality of the events will improve as they play more.  When the games feature two NHL players for each team,  it’s much more entertaining than one-on-one.

Why not let Faust do some play-by-play and let the game go full screen?   That would give him the opportunity to tweak the players when they give up goals, miss on penalty shots or get into a fight (yes, there are more fights in EA Games NHL20 than in the real NHL).

Video game skill is not as important as player engagement.  Hopefully the NHL was able to get players who understand the entertainment value of chirping.  if you want an example, check out the Pittsburgh-Dallas game, clearly the best of the matches played so far.

For Ranger fans

You have to be pretty hardcore to tune into a Capitals-Panthers match, but when Chris Kreider is ready to play, it will be worthwhile viewing for the revelations we may get from the Rangers veteran.

There is no word about which team the Blueshirts will be taking on and we can only hope that Kreider is as adept at the Playstation version of the game as he is at deflecting pucks in real games.   Hopefully, they will find another Ranger player to team up with Kreider…it will make for more entertaining “hockey.”

Blue Line Station will be monitoring the schedule, released each week, and will have all the details when the Rangers are scheduled to “play.”