Deeks and Gren set to face off in the North American Finals
The semifinals of the EA SPORTS NHL 24 North American Championship are complete with Dany-Karl "Deeks" Lévesque and Matthew "Gren" Grenier advancing to the North American Finals later today.
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Semi final one was Deeks against Ethan "Polgz" Kerr-Polgar. Polgz took game one convincingly, defeating Deeks 5-2.
Deeks rebounded in the second game, saving his tournament by scoring with Lawson Crouse in overtime to win a back and forth game 5-4.
In game three Polgz jumped out to a 3-1 lead and seemed poised to advance to the finals. Deeks then scored three unanswered goals to go up 4-3. Polgz tied the game with just two minutes to go to force overtime for the second straight game.
After hemming Polgz into his zone and preventing a line change, Deeks was able to score with Nazem Kadri to win the best-of-three series and punch his ticket to the North American Finals.
"I didn't expect to make it this far, just being here today with the eight best players in North America was already good, I made it to the Worlds and came here with no expectations," Deeks told Anna Dua on the broadcast after his win.
The second semifinal renewed the rivalry between Justin "Regs" Reguly and Matthew "Gren" Grenier.
Regs is a two-time North American Champ (2022, 2020) and was runner up in 2021, while Gren was the 2021 champion and is a four-time runner-up (2022, 2020, 2019, 2018).
After a tight game one Gren was able to pull out a 4-2 victory. He followed that up with an incredible effort in game two, scoring three goals on his first three shots to jump out to a 3-1 lead. He then locked in down defensively and won the game 4-2, earning a spot in the finals against Deeks.
"I'm feeling good that was a really sweaty series, GGs to him as always, the score wasn't indicative of how the game actually was," Gren told Anna Dua after his match.
"The power rankings they put me seventh, everyone here had me second or third to win the whole thing so I definitely have a chip on my shoulder," said Gren when asked about his game.
All four competitors, Deeks, Polgz, Regs and Gren, have advanced to join Eki and Temppanen at the NHL 24 World Championships in New York on April 7th.
The finals can be seen on the NHL's YouTube and Twitch channels.