PowerPlayGoal.com – Hockey From A Different Angle

As you may or may not be aware the Washington Capitals just lost to Montreal in the first round of the play-offs.
Now why is this important enough that it gets an article on its own you ask? Well, Washington won the Presidents Trophy.

This trophy is feared by many to be “cursed”, and considering that only 8 teams to ever win it have gone on to lift the cup; it makes sense for fans to get a little bit scared.

Still, to cheer up those fans who just watched the Capitals who played well all season fall to Montreal; here is a guide to  some of the other curses affecting Hockey, and perhaps just a few other sports too.

The Curse of 1940

This curse is a mythical reason for the New York Rangers not winning a Stanley Cup; was broken when the Rangers finally won a cup in the 1994/5 season.

The curse originated in 1940, when the New York Rangers won the cup; around the same time as the owners of Madison Square Garden paid off their mortgage. The papers to this mortage were ceremonially burned in the cup, which led many fans to believe that the “sacred” cup had been desecrated; and it had angered the “Hockey Gods”

However, more realistically, there are many theories behind this supposed curse; the team faced diffuclty when players went off to war; Madison Square Garden management cleared them out during the playoffs for a circus however most people rationally believe it was just bad management.

The Buffalo Curse

This is regarded as a multi-sport curse that prevents any team from winning the cup of anything; be it the Stanely Cup, the Superbowl or whilst the city had an NBA team, the NBA championship.
This curse however seems to not prevent teams from winning trophies such as the Presidents Trophy and various AFC championship titles.

The EA Sports Curse

This is now known as the Madden curse; however this curse affects anyone to appear on the front cover of an NHL video game. A good example, During the 1998-99 season, Lindros had acheieved 93 points in 71 games, until his season came to an abrupt end with a collapsed lung during a game in Carolina. The following season he was removed of his captaincy after criticizing team doctors and missed 10 weeks to post-concussion syndrome. During the playoffs he suffered a major concussion; and missed the season after due to contract problems.
Notably, its believed this curse has ended since the lockout.

The Toronto Maple Leafs: 1967 NHL Expansion Curse

When the NHL decided to increase their amount of teams from 6 to 12; the currently fairly dominant Toronto Maple Leafs went from a 13 title winning team to a team that hasn’t won the cup since.

The Ottawa Senator Draft Curse

Did you know that any player chosen by the Sens in a draft pick has never gone on to win the Stanley Cup?
There is one technicality here, with Stanislav Neckar appearing on the cup for Tampa Bay. This player however spent most the season injured (he played just 6 games), and despite not meeting the criteria to have his name engraved was placed on the cup as a “mark of respect”.

So I hope that if your a Caps fan, this has made you feel better. If it hasn’t, then I am sure a road trip to Pittsburgh is in order so you can see justice take place.

I am KevKev, and I hope you enjoyed reading about these curses.

So you’ve played the NHL, the AHL and heck even the OHL, but they’ve never satisfied your craving for hockey – so, I would like to present you with the alternative; The Gamestar Hockey League (GHL).

Published and released in 1989 by Gamestar, developed by Mindspan; and it was released on both Commodore 64 and Microsoft DOS.
This games roots are from Canada, so they should know what they are doing. Right?

The game starts off with the usual tacky late 80′s splash screen. On it, 3d text rotates in displaying the games name, beneath, is a goalie half wearing an old mask displaying some kind of injury; Im thinking its supposed to be a black eye.
This screen then begins to play the games credits and will continue to loop until you press a key.

Pressing a key takes you to a “pop trivia” page, asking you a question about hockey.
However, rather than use real life hockey for its questions, it bases its questions upon the fictional league created by the game, the GHL.
I imagine that entering the correct answer unlocks something, however because I have no clue how to answer:
“What year was Marcel Alamode inducted into the GHL hall of fame”, or “What was Espy Phillips” best year” or even “How many times did Gordon Howie” play, I could not find out what happens.

The next screen is the menu, with 3 choices – Exhibition Game, League Play and Adjust Joystick.

First off I chose Exhibition Game.
The menu on choosing this allows you to choose from a team from either the Eastern or Western conference; and the city names that you can choose from seem about accurate from this games era.

The next step asks you to choose a few settings, including what controls each player is going to use, and even the option to work together with player 2. You can additionally choose the number of players per team (2,4 or 6),  choose Full Rules, Relaxed rules or Aussie Rules; change game speed, difficulty and even goalie control.

The next screen allows you to start the game, change the lines and even goes further to allow changes to the playbook and create new plays.
After customising the game to your standards, you are free to play the game.

The graphics of the game are by 1989 standards, pretty decent. The player sprites are a little on the generic side, all looking the same (blame a lack of computers memory), however there are plenty of colours; its easy to differentiate what teams are playing and the surrounding crowd, boards around the rink and even the arena look quite pleasant. They have even chucked a ref in to complete the “realism”.

However, this praise is short lived, as we realise the controls for the game are needlessly complicated. You choose what player y0u want at face off, and then proceed to play as that player until play stops. The controls are unresponsive, and dotted all around the keyboard making it very hard to play the game well. When you activate player goalie control, it gets even more confusing as the goalie has his own set of controls. I can’t help but feel this game really would enjoy having a joystick to make playing easier – but as I have no access to one, and am certain many people out there don’t.
Sound effects in game are pretty poor, with the generic buzz sound from retro games making a common appearance whenever you score, shoot or get checked. This is interlaced with “ragtime era” style piano music, and is definably the games weakest point.

Actual gameplay feels good, the players seem to move around fairly well, the game has a slight over tendancy to give out penalties, and shooting is a real hit or miss situation; as it winning a face off .
At the end of a period you get fairly detailed information about the game, including penalty time, shots and a scoring summary.

The league play function takes the above gameplay into a season format, with a myriad of options being made available to the player; including the amount of intra-division and intra-conference games in a season and how the playoffs will run. The gameplay is as exhibition mode.

Overall, this game is not bad. The graphics are good for the era and whilst the player sprites feel a little lacking in detailed they look good as does the rink and crowd. The league mode is fairly customisable and definably has potential to last you a long time.
The games experience is let down on a few small points however, one being the slightly weird controls, and another being the strange questions it asks you on startup. The games music is also another low point, with me resorting to muting my laptop during this review – It really is awful.

Final Verdict: 5/10 – Not Bad

I’m KevKev, this is PowerPlayGoal.com

This is more of a self gloss than a worthy news item; however anything that costs an absurd amount of money, planning and time all in the name of hockey is worthwhile news in my opinion.

The NHL unsurprisingly listed three games to be played outside the USA and Canada at the beginning of the 2010 / 2011 Season. We at PowerPlayGoal.com decided that it was high time we took a random jetset mini break to catch some NHL action (its rather hard to catch decent hockey on this side of the pond).

Astonishingly, just 2 days after they were announced, tickets for the match up in Stockholm (Blue Jackets vs. Sharks) were on sale!
Armed with an American Express card, the race was on to book some decent seats that wouldn’t cost us the earth.
However; Ticnet (a company owned by the infamous Ticketmaster company) refused to accept my Amex, or any card to be precised.
One phone call to Sweden late and I had secured two tickets to the NHL game. Seems they do not accept foreign cards online (take note anyone planning on going). All I had to do was transfer the money across to them from my bank (This cost a lot of money also).
One week later, the tickets arrived; and the trip was confirmed. PowerPlayGoal.com is off to Sweden.

A trip report will be written when we go. Roll on October!

Kev.