Monday FTW - Weekend of Champions

It was a weekend of winners as the NBA and NHL crowned new champions over the weekend while at the same time EA SPORTS looks at crowning some gaming winners over the next few weeks as well.

Congratulations go out to Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins as they overcame a 3-2 series deficit to go FTW in the final two games and earn the right to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup in Detroit, winning only their second game in Hockeytown in the last two years.

After being chased out of game 5, Marc-Andre Fleury came up with two career games and received a little help from the crossbar near the end of game seven letting in only two goals in game six and seven to backstop the Pens to the Cup. With Sid injuring his knee in the first period of game seven, the team rallied behind their captain as Maxime Talbot scored two of his biggest goals to give the Pens the scoring needed to win.

It was quite the moment for Sid the Kid as he shared the ice with owner Mario Lemiuex who hadn’t hoisted the cup since ’92 when he won his second in a row as a player. Sid was so much into the moment that he almost forgot about shaking the hands of last year’s champions leaving some of the Red Wings to patiently wait for him to shake his hand. Did he snub the team or was he just into the moment? I’ll say that patience is a virtue and even for the Wings, though it had to be bitter watching the Kid celebrate, those are the breaks when it comes to winning a championship.

Kobe can now remove the kryptonite from his shorts as he shook a monkey off his back (or a gorilla named “Shaq”) winning his fourth Larry O’Brien Trophy and confidently leading the LA Lakers to the NBA Championship over NBA LIVE 10 cover athlete Dwight “Superman” Howard and the Orlando Magic.

The Black Mamba was double-teamed throughout game five which left other Lakers shooters open. The team delivered hitting 50% of their shots from the arc and hitting 75% from the line to disappoint the home side looking to extend the series to a sixth game. It was a big 16-0 run following a confrontation between Trevor Ariza and Hedo Turkoglu that was the difference in the game.

The championship was also head coach Phil Jackson’s tenth and there was no shortage of celebration as he remains undefeated when his teams win the first game of a championship series.

With these championships in the book, EA SPORTS looks to crown its own champions as we kick off the NHL 09 EASHL Invitational in a couple of weeks. For months, the EASHL has been running strong and hundreds of teams have played thousands of games and have climbed the leaderboards to earn the right to be invited to our first post-season tournament.

Congratulations go out to the two regular season console champions: Shammers United who finished the season playing 3235 games and amassing 8234 points on the Xbox 360 while the No CryBabys played 1278 games and earned 7135 points to clinch first place on the PlayStation 3. These are the first teams that have received invites to the tournament and we will announce the other seven teams per console this Wednesday.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, you have to see the EA SPORTS ‘Joy’ commercial that aired at the NBA Finals last week. Coinciding with the commercial is our Welcome to the Win webpage from EA SPORTS Beta highlighting athletes’ wins in their respective sports. We will also be sharing our gamers’ wins as well so stay tuned to the site and look for new areas to unlock in the near future.

To close, congrats go to local swimmer Brent Hayden of Vancouver who went FTW and defeated Olympic Gold Champion Michel Phelps during the Santa Clara International Grand Prix swim meet over the weekend. Hayden swam a personal best of 48.44 seconds in the 100-metre freestyle to edge Phelps who clocked in at the finish at 48.87 seconds.

Ask these guys if every second counts, and you’ll appreciate what it takes to be a champion.