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First and foremost, THANK YOU to @Evan, @chaos and @MikeGartner22 for putting together a successful tournament! In case you didn't know, these buds are awesome and everyone contributed to the success of this tournament in different ways! Special thanks to @corbettkb, who took the time to show @CoachMac around NYC, help out in any way he could, and just being completely selfless all the time. He even picked up the food tab Friday! An amazing asset to the '94 community and amazing competitor as well! Glad we were able to hang out for a couple days! Speaking of Coach, I am a fan and was very happy that he could make it to the tournament. I hope you had a great time, and that your trip was worthwhile. I promise to do the trip out to Nevada one day to hang out in your neck of the woods (mountains?) when I can score some cheap flights! As I reflect upon the weekend, it always comes down to the same thing -- enjoying spending time with the 94 community, both known and all the new buds I got to meet! So happy that @IAmFleury'sHipCheck was able to make it from Chicago and @kylewat took the Amtrack from Baltimore! I haven't seen Zep since Toronto; it was great to hang out and for him to show how strong of a '94 player he truly is! IMO, he is usually underrated because of his play style. EA, as usual, is great to talk to all day and I thought he played better than I have seen in some time! So appreciative that you come down and I cherish the signed '94 box that has become your calling card. Many many thanks! Great to see @skoolyardpuck again, great to hang/chat and play '94 with this guy. Hope to continue to see you around! @eggink444 and @da94wookiee came back from the '94 graveyard, and also hopped on for some great color commentary on the stream! Cheers to you guys! @aepurniet was a pleasure to meet you in person, and I think you officially ordered the first drink! Hope you had a great time bud! @Sdogg made the trip into the city and he brought the great energy, and was close to convincing his lovely wife to play! @crazygoalie33 hasn't missed any tournaments and seems to get some rough draws, this one included, playing wookie, Tex and eggink in the RR, only to meet eggink in the opening bracket losing a close 3 game set! @Bad Moon Rison , always appreciate the kind words and insights. You have run many Tecmo tournaments, from which we have taken ideas from, and love to see you continue to enter and play '94 tournies! (sorry to have knocked you out of the tourney bud). @banditra101801 (George) - happy you were able to make the tournament and even play in place of a no-show! Hope you had a great time! Finally, all the buds like @superfan99, Chris O. Matt, Ron D, and anyone who made the tournament that I may have missed, I hope you all had a great time! I encourage any/all feedback. At the end of the day we (whether us who ran NYC, or others like @halifax and @Edge of 94' WI) just want to make sure we're doing the best we can to make it enjoyable for all. Other thoughts LOVED * Random starting order vs pre-ranking * Modified swiss style round robin format, followed by elimination game. The swiss style led to some amazing round 3,4,5 games! * Buds who jumped on for streaming commentary. I will be making a highlight reel from the day to share in the near future! * Overall community, everyone is so cool, which makes running a tournament much smoother than I think. I'm constantly worried about things and I shouldn't underestimate you guys (all of you). CONSIDERATIONS * Handling of no-shows. Expected 1-2, did not expect 4. Also expected more guests. * Streaming set up. In short, I think a longer RCA cable will allow me to have the streaming/commentators a little further from the players. I also want the output to be broadcast for a larger crowd to see. * Add team and home/away to data capture for future analytics. While I fear over-complicating score entry, this has run very smooth for us in the past few tournies. Small tweaks to the scoresheets. Finally, on my own personal play, I am happy to have come out on top this tournament. My final opponents were Lupz, Tex and Zep, who, I feel, each could have won this tournament themselves. I got Lupz in game 01 early, and I knew he was not playing up to speed. It's almost like a sucker punch to the gut to start a fight, I was lucky to get one so quick. Game 02 went down to the wire, and 8-7 OT victory for me. Given our history, that was more of what we should have expected. Lupz played well and had about 2 instances when his player didn't shoot the puck! Easily could have been a game 03. Tex had just beat EA in two close ones, and I knew EA was playing well. Tex also beat me in the RR with an amazing comeback during our 4-0 vs 4-0 match. I picked VAN-DET and Tex was nice enough to give me Vancouver, a team he knew l liked (Detroit isn't bad either, lol). Second game was another speed session with DAL and WPG. Looking back, I was locked in, holding Tex to 1 goal for both games, not an easy task with those teams and his caliber of play. Finally, Zep was busting people all day, I had called his earlier matches against MikeGartner22. Game 01 was a disaster for me, Zep kept putting on the pressure and I couldn't get my Rangers to shape up. Game 02 was the opposite, where I was able to go up quick with Philly over Zep's Blues. So both of us had lopsided games to start, leaving a game 03. It was my turn to pick teams, and I went with Chicago / Buffalo, a high powered matchup that I like either way. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake since both teams have amazing home ice and Zep was home. Zep chose Buffalo and I had Chicago. If I lost this tournament with JR & Belfour, I had no excuses! Well, the game unfolded with JR on a mission! He single handily took over the game, scoring all my goals. I felt in control of the entire game and having Eddie in net was the ultimate security blanket. Proud of the victory, and though I felt like a boob for winning a tournament that I helped organize, everyone I played told me otherwise, so I feel better, Until next time (LI Retro Expo Aug 10-11th!)

Round Robin Results - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSLtsA5SPXzZzFy9dg9PtKTIbu-zrv4dwRGPBHFmgypWYByqksceO-G3rWzkW76lElde1G-DFmleuAL/pubhtml# It looks better in the sheet than published, but you should be able to follow. I did not fully think through the "bye" situation for no-shows as it deals with Goals For and Goals against. We used GF-GA as the tiebreaker within same records. So for those who got a bye victory (myself included), it was 1-0 and just a 1 goal victory. The round robin format was really set for 32, so I'll noodle on that some more for the future. I also have most of the score sheets with the team data. I'll try to add that sometime this week for analysis purposes. Same for the bracket play. I didn't initially build it into the model as it's overwhelming to track if you don't have dedicated admin people. All the organizers were also participating. More thoughts to come, but wanted to post this first.

I had so much fun, thanks.

@superfan99 you had a knowledge of the game I found utterly surprising! I don’t know how he amassed this knowledge but he had lots of tricks up his sleeve. He even did the @IceStorm70/ @HABS special cross crease pass shot.

I just wanted to echo the sentiments expressed by others that this was a tip-top tournament and a good time. Thanks Evan, John, Raph, and Scott for the work they did on making it a fun day. The raffle prizes were great and I am happy to be going home with at least one prize. The late games were very exciitng and I'm glad I stuck around! Congrats to Raph on winning it all. It was a lot of fun to talk strategy with the different teams with everyone. That's just as much fun as playing the games themselves. Got to get a few practice games in, too, with Robin and Brian. All-in-all, a good day of fun. As for my games, I'm pretty new to playing 94 competitively and haven't played Genesis much outside of the tournaments at the LI Retro Expo, so this was definitely a rude awakening to the level that most guys play. I went 2-3 in the early games, with my two wins coming by forfeit. I lost my first matchup to Paul, a close 4-3 contest (TOR vs NYR), who made me sweat a lot. My next contest was against Brad, who beat me pretty handily 5-1 with WPG (I was CGY) and thankfully he told me he's won a couple of tournies, so I didn't feel too bad about my effort. The last game was against Scott S., who beat me 3-2 with NYI vs. NJD, a game which we both described as a slog (definitely felt slow after the WPG/CGY game). All three guys were stand-up guys and a blast to play against. I hope to see them at a few more. I needed a play-in game to advance and drew George from LI Retro Expo, who I've known for a few years and lets us host Tecmo at the expo. It was good to finally play against him competitively after all he's done for the NY Retro community. It was all PA matchup and I was happy to have my Pens win against Philly 4-1. Then I got to play Aaron in the Best 2-out-of-3 bracket. Well, that was certainly an eye-opener. He called HFD vs WAS and I took the Capitals. Little did I know he likes to use the Whalers and I got down 4-0 right away. I didn't know there was a mercy rule in the bracket. Tack on a couple of slapshots from the blue line that went in and I lost 9-0. For game 2, I knew I had to get defensive. I called PIT vs. EDM and thankfully using PIT just a couple of games ago, I was able to come away with a 2-1 victory. Game 3, Aaron called HFD/WAS again (!) and knew there was no way that I should give him the Whalers again. Game was tied at 1 late when Geoff Sanderson got his own rebound and lightly flicked it in the net for the go-ahead goal and the game winner. Aaron was a good sport about it (especially about me muttering loudly at the first game) and I knew that either of our roads were likely going to end in the next round vs. Raph. I was able to get about 1.5 periods in for both games before the mercy rule took effect, but I am happy that I got as far as I did given the high level of competition on display yesterday. I hope to be just a little bit better by the next one. See y'all at the LI Retro Expo and hopefully many more!

Kudos and great job to @Evan @chaos @MikeGartner22 & @kingraph for organizing this great NYC tourney! This was my first NHL94 event and it was great meeting folks who now have a face (and real name) to go with their screen name. It was a good turn out today and everyone was having fun. For me, as primarily a spectator, it was fun talking custom roms and settings with @CoachMac. I'm sorry that I couldn't stay longer but I owed my wife a day in the city. I did get a couple of exis in so next time, I'll be brave enough to jump into a tourney when it's near home again. I was impressed by how respectful everyone is when playing exis as well as bracket play. There was a lot of good sportsmanship. Anywho... Congrats to Raph on another big win and congrats on great event! Cheers!