The front cover of a sports game is a place where the true greats of the game belong. Frozen there in suspended animation, looking focused, about to do something cool, they tell you everything about their sport at a glance. Posture, regalia, iconography. They’re the embodiment of why anyone would want to play that sport and, by extension, that video game.
At least, that’s what we thought until we saw Kyle Turris on the front of NHL Supercard 2K18. Because just like the NBA, ice hockey’s various licensed titles don’t always go for the obvious athlete for their cover. Sometimes, it seems, the marketing people just give up, write the name of every player in the league out onto bits of paper and let a cat pick one of those names out. And just like that: congratulations, Owen Nolan.
Before we drop the puck, let’s first mention that none of the players we’re about to name are even close to bad. They’re all fantastic, and they would have made it onto the first lines of most sides in the league at the time of their cover stardom. They’re just… weird picks. Let us explain.
Auston Matthews: NHL 22
Auston Matthews scored four goals on his debut in 2016, making that first overall pick by the Leafs look pretty smart. He’s been one of the most productive and exciting players in the league ever since. He put it ALL on the line in the 2022 playoffs and although that wasn’t enough to defeat reigning champs Tampa, he looks certain for a Stanley Cup at some point. Oh, and he scored a career-high 60 goals and 106 points in the 2021-22 regular season.
So he’s not here because he’s bad. And it’s not because he looks like Rami Malek making a Slapshot reboot. It’s because he was also on the cover of NHL 20. That’s two games ago.
This isn’t like EA giving two covers to Ovi to celebrate his longevity, in NHL 07 and then NHL 21. This feels a lot more like EA saying: “NHL 20 did pretty well with that Matthews cover. We should do something like that again. Any ideas?”
“Auston Matthews?”
“Done. That’s lunch, people.”
Owen Nolan: NHL 2001
Of all the right-wingers you didn’t want bearing down on you with a full head of steam on the ice in 2000, Owen Nolan was the least desirable figure. 215lbs of Northern Irish grit ready to flatten anyone on the blue line and force his way to the slot, Nolan was coming off a career year in 1999-2000 with 84 points when EA decided he’d be the face of its hockey franchise that year.
There are a few issues with this. One: if I handed you a pen and paper and asked you to name the big stars of ice hockey in the year 2000, you’d probably be running out of pad before you got to Owen Nolan. Two: his Sharks aren’t one of the iconic teams of the period, rarely getting beyond the first round of the playoffs. Three: usually we think of soft-handed, lithe players as cover athletes. Nolan was a 28-year-old power forward with high penalty minutes. While the Red Wings, Avalanche, and Devils fought for Stanley Cups with their iconic rosters and Kariya, Selanne et al graced the posters of the time, Nolan was just buckling down and getting on with it.
Zach Parise: NHL Supercard
Why doesn’t Zach Parise feel like an exciting, inspirational player? He’s certainly had some longevity in his career after being drafted 23rd overall by the Devils in 2006. And he’s had some success too, recording several 50+ point seasons over the years. He’s just never been The Guy in the league, the player everyone’s scrabbling for in free agency; the key piece all the budding cup contenders are trying to bring in to take their side over the hump.
It probably doesn’t help that Parise was one of the more visible figures at New Jersey during the team’s gradual decline from dynasty to division basement dweller. It was the era of disastrous Devils contracts like Kovalchuck’s infamous 15-year deal, and a pretty generous one of Elias too in retrospect. It wasn’t really Parise’s fault they were no longer perennial finalists. He was just wearing the jersey at the time, doing his best.
Still, you see him on the cover of a game, and you go: Zach Parise?
Markus Naslund: NHL 2005, NHL 2000 (EU)
As we’ve mentioned already, EA isn’t in the habit of giving out multiple covers to the same athlete lightly. Ovechkin earned those two covers by putting up nearly Gretzky-like numbers for more than a decade. Matthews… well, we’ve covered Matthews. But there’s no denying he’s one of the league’s most recognizable and exciting superstars.
This brings us to the only other NHL athlete to make it onto more than one cover, including one international version (Mark Streit is a multiple cover star in the Swiss version, would you believe). Ladies and gentlemen… Markus Naslund.
He’s a three-time all-star, posted 50+ point seasons with incredible regularity, and won the Lester B. Pearson Award in 2003. And even having achieved all that, the natural and pretty logical reaction to seeing him on two separate EA NHL covers is: what.
This is probably down to the Canucks’ spotty history making the playoffs at the time. Like Owen Nolan’s Sharks in the early ‘00s, they’re not one of the first teams your mind goes to when you think of that era. Certainly not as readily as you’d think of Ovechkin or Matthews in the modern era. And yet there he is, proud star of two games from arguably the best era of EA Sports’ hockey games.
Dion Phaneuf: NHL 09
This one isn’t strictly Phaneuf’s fault. In the late noughties he had the kind of buzz that it’s very difficult for a defenseman to get in the league, and he was part of a Flames side that was great to watch. If anyone at the blue line deserved a cover appearance at the time, it was Phaneuf.
That is, until Sean Avery happened. Avery will go down in history as one of the sport’s most dislikeable figures, conducting himself on and off the ice like a pantomime villain who only grows stronger from the boos and and cries of his adversaries. Even loose association with this man during his time in the league was bad news.
So when Avery told the press he was amused by other NHL players going after his “sloppy seconds” after it was revealed Phaneuf was dating his ex Elisha Cuthbert, that cover instantly took on a different context. NHL 09 was now the Hollywood couple media spat game. Avery was suspended for six games following his comments and the Stars severed ties with him immediately, but he’d already done the damage: you saw Dion Phaneuf and you thought of Sean Avery.
Kyle Turris: NHL Supercard 2K18
Oh, NHL Supercard. Back at it again with another totally evocative athlete in 2K18, and this time it’s Kyle Turris gracing the cover. You’d probably want him in your organization, if he was happy with third line minutes and a cap-friendly contract. But never since he was drafted into the league in 2007 has a young child sat watching their first hockey game and asked “Mommy, daddy… who’s that? When I grow up I want to be just like him!”
He’s just not that guy. This is a player whose career high goals in a season stands at 26. When he was on this cover, Connor McDavid was putting up 108 points at the age of, what, three? Laine, Mackninnon and Point were all grabbing headlines with their performance as youngsters. The Golden Knights were on a fairytale journey to the cup finals in their debut year. But no: the season is immortalised on this cover with an image of Kyle Turris passing the puck with all the intensity of a nature show voiceover.
Chris Drury: NHL 2K2
You see the formula by now, right? Great player + season or team with several more memorable great players not featured = weird cover star. Chris Drury was indeed a great player, and at the height of his powers when he made this cover. Unfortunately for him, he isn’t Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, or Patrick Roy. History remembers that triumvirate of players first when it comes to the great Avalanche dynasty of the ‘90s and early ‘00s, as important a component in it as Drury was.
Maybe 2K approached those three first and they all declined. Maybe someone on the team was a particularly big Drury fan. Who knows.
The season after his cover appearance, Drury moved over to the Flames, a side you instantly go ‘Jarome Iginla’ when you think of. Poor Chris.
Sidney Crosby: ??
Finally, after a long list of questionable players who did make the cover, here’s an unquestionably iconic one who never did. Sidney Crosby, generational talent, one of the deadliest players in the league from his rookie year to the present day. Yet to grace a game cover.
Realistically, one has to imagine this is Sid the Kid’s choice, and not an incredible streak of snubs on the part of EA and 2K. Yes, he’s a divisive figure, perhaps in part because he’s sunk most of the Eastern Conference at one or another point of his playoff career, but he also doesn’t have that easygoing, ‘isn’t hockey fun’ vibe that Ovechkin does. Maybe the execs thought he’d be bad news on a cover?
That would be madness, of course. More likely, Crosby just wanted to concentrate on hockey, and as a famously superstitious athlete, didn’t want to tempt fate by giving into vanity for a second and letting a game worship him. See also: Evgeni Malkin.
Written by Phil Iwaniuk on behalf of GLHF.
