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EA Sports unveils the first three legends for NHL ’12: Gretzky, Chelios and Bourque

nhl12cover

If you don’t already know by now, EA Sports’ NHL ’12 will feature a collection of retired hockey legends in its Legends Mode. In that last post, we speculated about which legends might be incorporated in the game, but those were just educated guesses. EA made three of those nine players official through a Games Trailer video late last night: Wayne Gretzky, Chris Chelios and Ray Bourque.

To start off the clip, you can see Gretzky working in his “office.” (Which was one of the things I hoped to see when that initial legends trailer was released. Nice job, EA.) The interesting part is that he was setting up a goal for Taylor Hall instead of, say, Jari Kurri. That indicates a few things: the game probably won’t have classic teams - an understandable bummer - and it also shows that legends will be available for use with all 30 NHL teams. (They’ll also be available in the game’s HUT mode, though one could imagine them being harder to come by.)

Moving on, the clip also showed Bourque and Chelios in action. Close-ups of Chelios and Gretzky make it clear that EA went to great lengths to capture the look of each player and the “office” footage shows that there was at least some attention paid to their styles and quirks. Here’s that video in question.
[vodpod id=Video.14912923&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Of course, the question EA wants you to ask is: which other six players will be in the game?

There are various hints that indicate Mario Lemieux, Patrick Roy, Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe will likely be included in the game. (The shape of the silhouettes gives away the presence of a goalie and a few players who aren’t wearing helmets. Sadly, Craig MacTavish probably won’t be one of those players.)

Doug Miller of Kukla’s Korner
does a solid job of breaking down the remaining candidates for the last two spots (assuming that the first seven are correct, of course).

So with that, here is my short list of more “modern” forwards, along with likely team, who might grab one of those final two spots…

- Mark Messier (New York Rangers)
- Joe Sakic (Colorado Avalanche)
- Steve Yzerman (Detroit Red Wings)
- Mike Bossy (New York Islanders)

Taking the “helmet” issue into account, here are some old school alternatives, of which there could only be one included, assuming I’m right about Howe and Orr…

- Jean Beliveau (Montreal Canadians)
- Bobby Hull (Chicago Blackhawks)
- Maurice Richard (Montreal Canadians)
- Bobby Clarke (Philadelphia Flyers)


Woof, it’s pretty tough to narrow that list down to just two more players, isn’t it? If I had to narrow the list down a little bit, I’d say that one of the spots could come down to Yzerman or Messier while the other might come down to Hull or Richard. Again, that’s a complete guess, though.

Which nine legends would you like to see in the game? Personally, I’m a little bummed out that Dominik Hasek probably won’t be involved, especially since video game technology has come far enough to accurately mimic the Slinky-spine movements that made him so fun to watch. As they say in sports and sports video games, there’s always next year.