2026 Commissioner’s Surprise Hockey Blast Tournament

Welcome to the live update page for our 12th annual Commissioner's Surprise Hockey Blast Tournament--where EVERY team has a chance to win it all! We’ve held the finals for this tournament in various cities over the past dozen years, including Boston, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and others. Last year, we played the finals of the tournament on-location in Dallas, TX at BGG.CON 2025, the annual BoardGame Geek convention at the Hyatt Regency hotel. This year’s tournament will be held entirely at-home, with reports posted online here.

Want to claim a game? We’d love to have you participate! You can play with either the full-play or “express” versions of HOCKEY BLAST Pro Hockey Game, you’ll be using the just-released 2025-26 Pro Season cards (or PDF). Just look over what’s available and let us know what game you’d like to play!

How does the Commissioner's Surprise Tournament work? Well, EVERY pro team from the HOCKEY BLAST 2025-26 Pro Season card set is included in the tournament, all 32 teams! It's single-elimination, and the match-ups were completely random—we literally DRAW them out of a hat! This format always generates some surprises, as there's no seeding, home ice is assigned randomly and hot streaks are over-rewarded! Last year's final four included two third-place teams (New Jersey and Edmonton), a fifth-place team (St. Louis) and our annual “Cinderella” squad (Pittsburgh). The championship game was one for the ages, We expect similar drama again THIS year! Here’s a recap of the entire 2025 tournament.

Games are listed below. The community member who is playing/played the game is indicated in (parentheses), the winner of the game in green.

First Round

Columbus 3, at Nashville 1 (Mitch Singer): Columbus surprised Nashville by beating them 3-1 with two goals in the third period. 

Buffalo 0, at New York RGR 3 (Chris Hoffman): First period was choppy, filled with fights, and penalties. No flow to the action. Second period, Rangers picked up an early power play chance. After Luukkonen thwarted one Rangers chance, Buffalo controlled the rebound, but Conor Sheary forced a turnover, and Vincent Trochek had a Spectacular Shot chance, which he converted for a 1-0 Rangers lead. That was followed by more fights, and penalties. Rangers had a sequence where they had plenty of shots on net, but the white die 1 kept coming up--no goals. Same thing for Buffalo in the next minute. In the final minute of the second, with New York on the power play again, a Buffalo turnover became a Spectacular Shot chance, and a goal for J.T. Miller. Rangers led 2-0 after 2. First minute of the third, Buffalo had chance, after chance, getting snake-bitten by Shesterkin. Buffalo had a few more chances, and a couple of lulls in there brought it past the halfway point of the third. Buffalo had more shot chances again being thwarted by Shesterkin. Four minutes left, Buffalo pulled netminder Luukkonen. After the faceoff, J.T. Miller had another Spectacular Shot chance on an empty net, which Buffalo failed to knock down.

Washington 4, at St. Louis 2 (Pete M): The scoring opens in minute 5 with Jake Neighbors putting the Blues up on the FOURTH breakaway of the minute (2 for each team!)... St Louis kills a penalty with a Lull and are leading 1-0 after one. Tom Wilson continues to stir up trouble for the Caps as he's whistled off but Justin Sourdif catches the Blues flat-footed with a shorthanded goal! Logan Thompson then makes a Spec Save in the 2nd minute of the PK and the momentum is all Washington.... later in the period, the clubs exchange goals from 4th liners with Ethen Frank putting the Caps ahead but Joel Hofer turns the tide with a Spec Save, providing the momentum for Jonatan Berggren to tie it at 2-2... things quiet down with 9 Lull minutes to end the period. Things get cautious in the 3rd period with mostly Lulls, then with 5 minutes to go the Blues pull the Play Shot strategy card which backfires as the Capitals get a breakaway but Hofer makes the stop... Washington coach makes a defensive move, putting 3rd pair d-man Matt Roy up to the top pairing for an extra defensive square and it makes a difference as a Normal Minutes roll of 11 forces a turnover and Alexei Protas puts the game-winner past Hofer in minute 19! Wilson adds an empty-netter and the Caps advance to the next round. 

Dallas 3, at Montreal 1 (Greg Flynn): Despite being outshot 39 - 25 the Dallas Stars handled the Montreal Canadiens by a 3 - 1 count. Desmith literally stood on his head! 

New Jersey 3, at New York ISL 2 (OT)(Brett Sonnenschein): A tight physical game. After a first-period fight, the Islanders took an early lead on a Duclair goal. Bratt tied it for the Devils on a 4-on-4 a few minutes later. After a lull-filled second period, Glass gave the Devils the lead early in the third period. Sorokin denied the Devils on a breakaway with ten minutes to go and started one of his own, leading to a Horval goal. A late Islander penalty kill preserved the tie, and the game went into overtime. But it was a very short OT, as the Devils got a breakaway on the faceoff and Jack Hughes passed to Conner Brown for the game-winner. 

Ottawa 4, at Boston 0 (Andrew Sexton): Ottawa marches into TD Garden and takes it to the Bruins winning 4-0 behind a stellar performance by Linus Ullmark and 2 Tim Stutzle goals. The Senators dominated from the 1st minute of the Gabe when they scored goal number 1 to the 20th minute of Period 3 when they scored goal number 4. Jeremy Swayman made a few Spectacular Saves just to keep Boston within shouting distance but they couldn’t get anything past Ullmark .

Edmonton 1 at Los Angeles 4 (Tim Lucas): Things were pretty square through the first two periods in this anticipated battle of heavyweights in the first round. Jake Walman put the Oilers on the board in the first and Artemi Panarin answered in the second for the Kings. The final twenty belonged solely to the LAK in almost every way. Edmonton only managed to put up six shots against Kuemper and the Kings offense assaulted Connor Ingram with 15 shots plus an empty netter. Kempe and Panarin each had a goal and two assists for the Kings. 

Las Vegas 4, at Florida 1 (Giorgio Salvadego): A match of highs and lows with Vegas in almost total control of the game. Nonetheless a very rough and tumble game with Mark Stone getting involved in two fights and thus getting a Game Misconduct, all this in between long stretches of absolutely nothing. Dorofeyev stole the show scoring a hat trick. 

Utah 2, at Detroit 4 (Derek Jones): To say this was a physical game was an understatement. There were NINE penalty events in this one, with several occurring during power plays. One of them was a boarding major by Ben Chiarot in the opening minute of the second. Utah got one goal out of that major power play, but drew minors in back-to-back minutes to negate the final three minutes of it. Crouse and Seider duked it out later in the second, which injured Seider for the rest of the frame. Also, both starting goalies (Vejmelka and Gibson) got injured in this game. Yes, there was scoring, mostly during all those power plays. The Red Wings survive the bloodbath with a 4-2 win. Larkin took the #1 star with two goals and an assist. 

Carolina 3 at Pittsburgh 5 (Ryan Strauss): In an exciting game, Carolina and Pittsburgh squared off. Pittsburgh would jump out to an early 2-0 lead on the road thanks to goals from Erik Karlsson and Sidney Crosby. From there, Carolina would have many chances and eventually broke through, thanks to goals from Nikolaj Ehlers and Jordan Staal, tying the game at two after two periods of play. In the third, the teams exchanged goals quickly early, before Evgeni Malkin netted a power play goal, making it 4-3 Pittsburgh. The Penguins would add an empty netter late in the game from Anthony Mantha to take the 5-3 victory at home over the defending Stanley Cup Champions in round one! 

Calgary 4 at Toronto 5 (OT) (Benjamin Gross): The Calgary Flames go on the road and jump out to an early 3-0 lead in Toronto, scoring 3 times in a six-minute stretch during the first period on a struggling Anthony Stolarz. But the Maple Leafs regroup and battle their way back to a 4-2 deficit after 40 minutes, with goals coming from team leaders Auston Matthews (power play) and William Nylander. In the third period, William Nylander scores his second goal of the game (this time on the power play), cutting the lead to 4-3. Toronto then got an equalizer very late from Matthew Knies, who tips in a rebound on a slapshot from Morgan Reilly, tying the game at 4-4 and seeing this one into overtime. In overtime, William Nylander is the hero, fulfilling his hat trick by scoring the game-winner and completing a stunning comeback at home for the Maple Leafs – Toronto’s first lead of the game! A heartbreaking road loss for the Calgary Flames, who led by multiple goals for most of the evening, only to see their three-goal lead erased in the defeat. 

Winnipeg 3, at Anaheim 2 (Hans Larson): Anaheim and Winnipeg looked like two fairly evenly matched teams on paper, which translated directly to how this one would turn out. Anaheim started the scoring at the 10min mark of the first period on a routine tick-tac-toe play. SENNECKE with the Anaheim goal. Winnipeg would answer in the dying seconds of the first with an unassisted desperation snipe by SCHEIFELE. 1-1 after 1. Anaheim came out firing on all pistons in the second and pumped in an early marker by CARLSON assisted by GAUTHIER and CARLSSON for a 2-1 lead. It wouldn’t last long as Winnipeg penetrated the Anaheim defenders 2 minutes later on a goal by CONNOR assisted by PERFETTI and SAMBERG. The period would be loaded with Anaheim penalties but none amounted to anything. 2-2 after 2. There was no scoring in the 3 period. 3-on-3 Overtime lasted two minutes as Winnipeg 3-on-3 Line 2 scored on their first opportunity with a game winner by VILARDI assisted by BARRON and IAFALLO. 

Minnesota 3, at Philadelphia 4 (Ray Barrett): Flyer’s FWD. Travis Konecny with the game-winning goal. 

Tampa Bay 1 at Colorado 2 (Chris Day): Tight checking game with Avalanche goalie Mackenzie Blackwwod & Lightning goalie Jonas Johansson coming up big when challenged, but in the end Blackwood & the Lightening came out on top. 

Chicago 0, at Vancouver 1 (Rob Gallamore): Both goalies were superb in this penalty filled affair that featured two first period scraps. Linus Karlsson scores the only goal of the game on the powerplay to give Vancouver a 1-0 victory. 

San Jose 4, at Seattle 1 (Aaron Starcher): After a slow start and going down 0-1 in the 1st, San Jose came alive scoring 3 goals in the 2nd. Newly appointed Captian Macklin Celebrini capped off the night scoring a goal in the 3rd for a 4-1 San Jose W. Askarov stopped 35/36 to pick up the W. 

Second Round

(match-ups to be drawn 10.05.26 on the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel)