Every year, a star player from the National Hockey League is featured on the popular NHL game, delivered by the company EA Sports. Every late summer, fans wait anxiously to find out who will be the game's headliner. Every fan hopes to find their favorite player... Although I'm not sure any Toronto Maple Leafs fan would want one of their players on the cover.
The reason for this is that only two of the last 25 athletes chosen for the cover of the NHL game reached the second round of the playoffs the year that they were on the cover. This is very bad news for the Leafs, who haven't made the second round of the playoffs since the spring of 2004. From 2005 to now, the team has been knocked out of the playoffs ten times. Nothing less!
Going back to Matthews, he was on the cover of the 2020 (and 2022) game and the Leafs lost in the first round. In 2021, Alex Ovechkin found himself on top of the game and his Caps were unable to get through the first round this summer.
In 2019, it was P.K. Subban who received the honor of making the cover, he who loves this kind of attention, and then the Nashville Predators were out in the first round. In 2018, the best player in the world in terms of skills, Connor McDavid, made the cover and his team was unable to sneak into spring ball. Is there really a curse on the NHL game? Is there such a thing as serendipity? We're talking here...
