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.

Busy first week back at EAC - sk88z's Blog - Operation Sports

Originally Posted on Operation Sports

Talk about a crazy first week back at work here at EA Canada. As a first blog post here in OS, I wanted to share a little of what I do in my day-to-day as a Community Manager. I really do think I have one of the sweetest gigs around and I consider myself pretty lucky to work with the talented people that I do.

Fight Night Round 4 - I'm in the midst of putting together our Community Day event near the end of February and putting out invites to EA Fight Night fans. I'm a huge fan of the game myself and really excited about having some of the community come on in and check out what's in store.

If you haven't yet chimed in on the Ali vs Tyson debate, check it out on the official website: Fight Night Round 4 and talk about it in our forums (as well as on the OS ones of course). I'm looking for an OS representative as well (non-editor) so if anyone is interested have one of the OS editors here send me your info.

NBA LIVE - I've been working with the NBA LIVE team who I know are present on these boards quite a bit. I think it's great that they are out in the community talking and listening to the fans and from what I can tell from their planning, the game is going to, once again, make some huge strides.

We've just launched our NBA LIVE Staff Group Page where, along with here, I've asked them to talk about their behind the scenes look at the game as well as talk about who they are in general. Check out Jeff Antwi’s look at some of the talent from a recent Motion Capture session, Ryan Santos’ Sneak Peek at some of new kicks that will be in the game, Marcus Stephenson with another look at Dynamic DNA, and Gameplay Designer Mike Wang tells us about his holiday break.



NHL - On behalf of the team, I'm excited that OS has recognized the hard work that the team has done over the past year(s), and thank the editors for work they've done. Being recognized by the gang here for the SPOY is some huge recognition and I know the team will be pleased to hear that they're the recipients of this year's award.

For those of you that are interested, there were also a couple of Q&A's on the upcoming 3 on 3 NHL Arcade game soon-to-be released. Check out my Q&A with Matt Mahar and ESPN's Jon Robinson's Q&A with Matt and David Littman.

I've also began to Simulate NHL Games of the Week and you can check out our first round of sims to see if you agree with what NHL 09 predicts.

NCAA Basketball - Looks like the voting is just about all counted up for the EA SPORTS Toughest Places to Play contest and if you haven't had a chance to vote yet, I'm told they'll be shutting it down this weekend. I've also been told that I may have a chance to visit a couple of the schools to write about it so I'm personally really excited about that! Take me to UCLA!!!

Make sure you also check out Producer Novel Thomas' handy work in his Hoops 101 videos that give you the edge in the game. I'm working with them as well to get their Staff Group page up, though I know that the team has a lot of presence on these boards as well and I know they've had a lot of interaction with you folks already.

I'll come back from time to time to share my thoughts & rants with you as I know that the hardest core fans are here at Operation Sports and I wanted to acknowledge that and share a little of what goes on here at EAC. Feel free to message me directly or leave me comments and I'll do my best to respond to them. In the meantime, I'm prepping for a trip to Orlando next week to meet up with my fellow Community Managers from around the world and plan our ideas for the upcoming quarter.

I can't wait to get out of the snow and into some warm Florida sun!!!