Inside ECL: Interview with cHIIMERa

Entry posted by FINSeRe January 12, 2016

3595 views

cHIIMERa – Northern Stars

Today we have the privilege of interviewing Viktor “cHIIMERa” Ghamari from Northern Stars! Let’s have a chat with him!

(((NOTE: Interview done BEFORE ECL!)))

What’s up Viktor!

Hey man! Not much, sitting here and waiting to get some sleep after a long day at school. How about you?

Haha I'm fine, just busy with these interviews before ECL starts!

Northern Stars and some of your players have an almost godlike reputation over Xbox. Tell us PlayStation -players why is that?

Well thanks for setting the expectations extremely high for us SeRe Hm.. We managed to make a name for ourselves back in the earlier years of EASHL. We won some consecutive championship titles, and uhm.. We got lots of hype and I think that it kinda got stuck you know?

Haha no problem! But are you actually that good? This will be great test for many teams to see what kind of team you really are, but have you noticed other teams while on PS4 that can compete with you and you know you will have hard time with against them?

Hm.. Now that’s a question I definitely would like to think thru before answering. If I would have time that is. I’ll turn the question around a bit and say that the rest of the teams have caught up with us. We’re still performing on a high level but so are other teams also. There is at least 10 teams I’ll be going: ”Oh nice it’s them! Let’s step our game up boys” about It’s going to be an interesting ECL for sure!

How would you describe Northern Stars and how was your team founded in first place? Are you guys all from Sweden and are you friends in real life?

Northern Stars was created back in NHL 09 by Falkiniz who has retired. I joined the team on its birthday and have been playing here ever since. I guess it’s one of my qualities that I’m veeeeeeeery loyal Floor, ma0niii and OODAP joined in NHL 10. Rullstolskalas, Mullweiser, Robhaf and M4Gustafsson joined in NHL 13. And that has been our roster, until NHL 16 when Plee joined us. We’re all from Sweden except OODAP and Plee. They’re Finns. Me, ma0niii and Floor are good IRL-friends now. Just from getting to know eachother over NHL. I think that’s pretty cool. How I would describe us? In all honesty we’re just a bunch of merry misfit’s when it comes down to our parties on PSN. One weirder than the other. But We’re having fun. And thats all that matters

Hmmm interesting! How about this next-gen EASHL hockey. It’s pretty different comparing to older gen. How do you like it and how your team has been able to adapt to this new hockey game?

I would say that the game is bit slower and more defense oriented isn’t it? Harder to score as well. Of course as we’re a decent team offensively we’ve been a little frustrated with our inability to rack up goals as we managed to do before. But that’s how the game has evolved. With that said, we don’t mind playing ”defense first” either. Now the series tends to give us many tight and exciting games since we started playing NHL 16.

Now just a simple question! Tell us about you, and how did you end up playing NHL at the 1^st place?

Easy enough I’m Viktor Ghamari, 29 years old swede playing for Northern Stars. I like Cats and… Haha I got you didn’t I? Pretty hard to tell other people about yourself without making it sound like a job interview... I’ve been hearing that I’m a pretty nice guy. I’ll just leave it like that. When I started playing NHL? This is going to sound a bit funny I think. It was a rainy autumn day back in 1993. I put NHL 93 into the SNES and picked up the controller. And that was all I needed, I was hooked. From there I pretty much enjoyed the series on a recreational level. I mean since then I have been familiar with the series but it wasn’t until I first tried NHL 08 on Xbox 360 I started playing on a more regular basis.

So do you play anything besides NHL?

Both yes and no. I tend to grab the big releases, play them through and then leave them into my drawer. So it’s not very lasting. I can go for months without playing anything. Then I’ll play 5-6 days a week for a month. It all comes down to what the new releases are. Right now Fallout 4 is a game I’ve been waiting forever. So I have been playing that like a crazy for a while. Witcher 3 was an awesome release in 2015 as well, waiting for the next DLC.

Why did you guys decided to swap from Xbox to PlayStation?

I actually think the Xbox 360 community came together pretty well trying to make most of us to choose the same console as the release of PS4 and Xbox ONE came closer. There was this poll on ConsoleHockey where people voted on which console you should grab and PS4 had a clear advantage. There was also this awesome blogger on 360 named Jesus (We miss you buddy!) that preached it was time to move on. So for us as a team which doesn’t like to spend time in the dressing room, it really wasn’t the hardest choice.

Are there any familiar teams or players at the tournament?

Even though this will be our first tournament on the PlayStation side. We have been sharing ConsoleHockey for years. So some of the teams I’ve known before even playing against them. Carlsberg HC, The United Knights, Nordic Nosebleed and Nordic Blizzard are some of those teams. I have to be honest. I’ve seen lots of individual skill on the other teams as well. But I haven’t played long enough on PlayStation to remember the actual names of the players. I’m sure this upcoming tournament will give me lots of info for the future.

You said this will be interesting ECL but will this be the best European league so far by skill and competition?

I think so yeah. I mean the tournaments played over the years has mostly been like ”these are probably the 4 teams in the semifinals.” And most of the times those 4 teams were eventually the ones to reach that semifinal spot. This year on the other hand I’m completely clueless. It’s both exciting and intimidating at the same time. But we’re looking forward to get started!

Would you agree that ECL is the biggest reason to play EASHL or even NHL itself?

This is a no brainer for us. Yeah it is. The thrill of EASHL tends to fall off for us around November every year. After that it’s just sitting around and waiting for the tournament to start.

Are there any rivalry teams or players contending in ECL?

The truth? We don’t have any rivals, but obviously we try extra hard against the best teams. I mean we are sure to get some rivalries. In time.. But since this is our first tournament on PlayStation we just have to wait and see. I have to give Sjukstugan a mention though. They’ve been around for some years now. Coming over from the 360 side. They have a really solid defense and it is always a pleasure to play against them. I wish we could have a chance to play more against other teams but we have far too few games played against Carlsberg HC, The United Knights, Nordic Nosebleed, Mukimiehet, Nordic Stars etc. to consider them as rivals. But they’re good teams nevertheless!

Who is the player opponent should keep eye on?

Hm.. Now giving away that information wouldn’t be very bright would it? Jokes aside. We’re good at different things. It all depends on what aspect of the game we’re looking. Mullweiser can score plenty of goals in a game if you don’t defend properly against him on the one timers. Floor has always been superb at reading the game over the years and always tends to make the right calls on ice. Plee is lethal.. He can create a scoring chance out of nothing. Rullstolskalas is the best defender of the game in my book. And Robhaf dishes out the pain like no one else. OODAP is a great goaltender as well. When his internet works. Unfortunately for us it does work in 3% of the games we’re playing though Haha.. And me.. I’m our quarterback. Hahaha..

Woah! Thank you for giving us your time, it was nice to chat! Good luck for you guys to the upcoming tournament!

The pleasure is all mine SeRe. Nice to chat with you indeed! I just gotta say. Keep on doing what you’re doing guys. Great job with the new webpage! And for the taking the time to help make our community better and interesting. I really like what I’ve seen of your work this far! I was supposed to sleep 1 hour ago. Time really flies.. Take care!

---

I hope you enjoyed this one eventhough I wasn't able to post this before. I want to thank cHIIMERa one more time for this great interview!

Be sure to leave a like/ comment and check out my social media! I hope to see you guys for the next post!

See you later!