Recent Articles: NHL 13

if you’re a hockey fanatic, you know that the NHL and the Players Association are this close to cancelling the entire season over their labor dispute. But with talks resuming today, there’s still hope that we could see some professional hockey in 2013.

What you may not know is that EA Sports has been simulating the entire 2012-2013 season with NHL 13 and they just posted a highlight reel of what have been tomorrow’s Winter Classic between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings.

The Winter Classic would have been a tense back-and-forth that remained tied at 4-4 through overtime. But the Maple Leafs would emerge victorious thanks to a shootout goal from John-Michael Liles.

I bet it would have been a great game.

We’ve made it to the final round of voting for the NHL 13 cover athlete. After narrow victories in the semifinal round, Philadelphia Flyers forward Claude Giroux and Nashville Predators goalie Pekka Rinne have become the last men standing. Giroux defeated Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin in the semifinal round, while Rinne iced New York Islanders forward John Tavares.

Final round voting begins today and will continue until June 4 at CoverVote.NHL.com.

The winner of the NHL 13 cover athlete vote will be revealed during this year’s NHL Awards. The award show is scheduled for June 20 and will be televised on NBC Sports Network in the US and on CBC in hockey-mad Canada.

It worked for one sport, so why not another?

EA Sports has caught cover vote fever and the only cure is another tournament… this time to determine the cover athlete of NHL 13. Like the Madden NFL 13 vote, two players from each team (for a total of 60) will compete in a play-in round. Because of the odd number of teams in each conference, EA will choose two losing players to advance as wild cards.

Voting for the play-in round begins today at covervote.NHL.com and continues through April 11 (coincidentally, the first day of the NHL playoffs). After the completion of the tournament, the NHL 13 cover athlete will be revealed at the 2012 NHL Awards on June 20. The game itself will follow with a PS3 and Xbox 360 release in September.

Since there’s no cover curse to go along with the NHL 13 cover, I’d assume players want to win this tournament. And just who’ll be competing? Hit the jump for the play-in round matchups. (more…)