TORONTO — Montreal’s P.K. Subban, Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson and Toronto’s Phil Kessel are among the eight players up for the cover for EA Sports’ new hockey video game.
The other cover athlete candidates for “NHL 15” are Boston’s Patrice Bergeron, San Jose’s Logan Couture, Los Angeles’ Drew Doughty, Colorado’s Matt Duchene and St. Louis’ T.J. Oshie.
The winner will be decided via a fan vote starting today on covervote.nhl.com/#/ballot. Fans can also use specific Twitter hashtags on Thursdays to advance their player’s cause.
The player vote is in a head-to-head format.
Quarter-final pairings pit Subban against Kessel, Bergeron against Karlsson, Couture against Doughty, and Duchene against Oshie. Voting for this round runs through May 18.
The cover athlete winner will be announced June 24 at the NHL Awards in Las Vegas.
The made-in-Vancouver video game comes out this fall for Xbox 360 and One and PlayStation 3 and 4.
Veteran Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils edged fellow goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky of the Columbus Blue Jackets in the fan vote for the “NHL 14” cover.
The “NHL 14” cover vote involved 60 players.
Claude Giroux of the Philadelphia Flyers was on the cover of” NHL 13.”
“NHL 15” marks the first iteration of the successful hockey franchise for next-generation consoles.
Commentary will be done by the NBC team of Mike (Doc) Emrick and Eddie Olczyk, along with TSN’s Ray Ferraro.
EA promises improved in-game physics, as well as upgraded player likenesses and arena models.
