I just came down from Montreal so here's a few impressions. The LAN ETS is always impressive in size and shows how much demand there actually is for BYOC LAN Partys here in Quebec so I'm proud the gamers here would answer the call. All 675 spots were all sold out before the event, not surprisingly attracting alot of the CSS community and also CoD and 1.6 teams. The atmosphere is always nice there. The NHL tournament I participated in has become sort of a classic at LAN ETS and even a small size metal Stanley Cup trophy has been done with the name of the winner being immortalized every year... and yes it's terribly heavy!

I had a bit of trouble at the preparation event in Quebec City the week before but since this was the real deal it gave me the time to adjust. First I practiced the whole week on a poor TV screen on purpose to match those at the event and that worked in my favor. I now digged the fluidity of the screen hitting my dekes and shots more smoothly. I had to face players like the Cyber Canada Cup winner Éric Ferland during the week-end and got a solid revenge on him winning 5-2 and 5-0. The finals also went well against Ian Hudon and while some of the plays honestly could have gone either way, I had no mental breakdowns despite the long day and was very focused. There are days like that were you feel you'll find a way to win no matter how things unfold. Even when he managed to swirl around my net for long minutes and try the highly effective wraparounds and such, I just stayed calm and blocked them successfully.  

I would also point out that it was nice to have a game of high skill in the finals where both players would control their goaltenders and read the opponent well. That's how the game is played at a high level in my opinion. A lot of players are complaining about the glitch allowance in NHL tournament and they should probably take a look at such games to see the depth in them. Although NHL has clear limits as a competitive game (randomness mainly) and I prefer some other 1v1 games, it can work out pretty well still.

Good games to Ian and the other players. It was nice to talk to you all and I hope we can keep some rivalries up for next year. It was probably the last NHL 09 tournament before NHL 2010 and I'm glad I could bring the 1^st place home for FD. Thanks as always to AMD, Razer, ATI and the others for their support! Here's some pictures we should have more soon.