OUR STORY

December 2006: Michael receives NHL2K7 as a Christmas gift.

For the next several years, Michael learns the rules of hockey by facing off against Byron in NHL2K7. Byron chose to play as the Boston Bruins because he attended the Oklahoma City Blazers games back when they were affiliated with the Bruins. Michael simply chose the hometown team, Carolina Hurricanes, who had just won the Stanley Cup.

Late 2010: Michael and Byron decided to upgrade their hockey game to NHL 11 because the PS3 offered better graphics. They would continue to battle each other throughout the NHL 11 season.

Late 2011: Once again Michael and Byron decided to upgrade their game to NHL 12 but this time around, they would try something different. Instead of battling each other, they teamed up as Team USA and took on the world in offline tournaments defeating big names like Canada, Russia, Finland and Sweden.

Late 2012: Once NHL 13 was released, they decide to try something new yet again. Realizing they enjoyed playing with each other more than against each other, they create an offline season as a new challenge. For this offline season mode, Michael didn't like the idea of just joining a team because he didn't like the Bruins and Byron didn't like the Hurricanes so to compromise, they made a new team.

Byron was not very tech savvy so that left Michael to create the team. Their free time was limited so Michael needed to create an entire team very quickly, so he took inspiration from his Call of Duty Clan "Triple X Elite". The closest name on NHL 13 to "Elite" was Aces and with a very limited logo selection, the old Atlanta Flames logo fit quite well. Continuing the Triple X Elite theme, filing the roster became easy and enjoyable at the same time because the names of the most active clan members would be used for the players, and each player's attributes would be based on a variety of Call of Duty skills giving the team a variety of players instead of having multiple players use the same or random attributes. That way each player would have their own strengths and weaknesses, creating a need to manage the lineup like a real team. The color scheme of red, black and white also comes from the Triple X Clan. These were the most common colors used on websites and in-game emblems. From a clan standpoint, the color red was thought of as the blood from their enemies, white for loyalty/dedication and black represented their elite skill and intimidation factor because of their tremendous success on the battlefield.

The Aces started their first season in the AHL as the Charlotte Aces. Charlotte was used because Michael and Byron were both lived in Charlotte at the time. It was decided to start in the AHL to get a feel for what a season mode entails and also a chance to progress to the NHL once they feel they were ready to do so. The one and only AHL season the Aces had could be looked at as a throw away season because the gameplay attributes and settings were very unrealistic and NHL players were used to fill the lineup whenever injuries occurred.

The second season also took place during the NHL 13 season. This time the Aces would compete in the NHL after winning the Calder Cup in the AHL previously. With more realistic gameplay settings and little to no NHL players in their lineup, the Aces were still able to win the Stanley Cup in their first ever NHL season.

A third and final offline season would take place on NHL 13 and once again the Aces would bring home the Stanley Cup, winning three championships in three seasons.

After completing 3 season modes, Michael and Byron looked for new ways to play. Because they didn't live together, the online world of EASHL became their next adventure. At first, they just played random drop-in games to get a feel for the online world. Eventually Byron was asked to join a small team called the Carnegie Crusaders. Byron said he'll only join if his son Michael could play as well and so they agreed to allow Michael to join the team also.

After serval weeks of playing with the Crusaders, Byron and Michael became the most active players on the team but with neither of them having GM access they decided to leave the Crusaders because they didn't have the authority to add new players to the team. So, when they met a new person wanting to join, they had to make a new team. Byron once again lets Michael takeover as GM and create an EASHL team. With a short turnaround time of creating this team from scratch, Michael decided to copy over his offline Aces team name, uniform, logo and colors to the online world and thus the EASHL "Triple X Aces" were born. The name "Triple X" was used instead of Charlotte because now not every member was from Charlotte, creating an online team did not require a real city name to be used and this would differentiate the offline and online teams.

For the remainder of the NHL 13 season the Triple X Aces would grow as a team, adding 4 more players making a total of 7 (Byron, Michael, Brett, Mitch, Bruce, Jeremiah and Nico). Brett would not give up number 14 forcing Byron to switch to 44. Byron originally chose 14 because that's the number he wore his entire baseball career. He then chose 44 because of its similarity to 14 and because of his Redskin idle, John Riggins. The Aces weren't able to win an EASHL championship that year, but they learned a lot about playing online, setting the team up for success the following year.

NHL 14: The Aces moved to NHL 14 in late 2013. Nico decide to move on to other things. He would be replaced by Matt.

Mitch, Bruce and Jeremiah would also leave the team in during NHL 14, but the Aces would acquire 13 more players and 1 goalie throughout the year totaling 18 making NHL 14 their most popular EASHL season to date.

Early in the NHL 14 season, 2 of the new members, Matt Johnson and Nick Johnson, thought they could do better on their own but when challenged by the remaining Aces, they were defeated twice, 3-1 and then a 10-2 DNF win in the 2nd period by their former team.

About halfway through the NHL 14 season, Brett created an alternate team called the Woony Novans because the Aces GM had become too busy with life to add new players at the time, but this team only lasted a few days because the Aces want to reconsolidate their players and stats once the GM returned.

By the end of the NHL 14 season, the Aces had won 2 Stanley Cups (offline), 2 Rookie Cups (online) and 7 Pro Cups (online).

NHL 15 was released late 2014 but only on PS4 and with no EASHL mode the Aces remained on NHL 14 for the NHL 15 season. During this season the Aces switched to a blue themed uniform to switch things up a bit until the next EASHL game was released. During the NHL 15 season the Aces would win their first 2 EASHL Elite Cups. After winning their first Elite Cup, the team wore a gold-colored collar to resemble a gold medal, celebrating their accomplishment.

NHL 16: EASHL returns during the NHL 16 season but with very basic elements. Because of the limited options, the Aces would temporarily change their logo and uniform to the Albany Devils. The Aces would lose several players but pick up new ones along the way. These new players would play a key role in their very successful NHL 16 season. The Aces would win a record 9 Elite Cups that year. Setting their longest cup win streak at 6 consecutive Elite Cup wins. The NHL 16 season brought another new thing for the Aces, their first rival team. "Weekend at Bernies" was a former team for Aces rookie Juliet Richards. Now that the Aces had one of their players, this instantly created a rivalry between the two teams. The Triple X Aces would faceoff numerous times against Weekend at Bernies. Both teams had similar skill levels which made for good games and strengthened their rivalry.

NHL 17 would bring new elements to the EASHL allowing the Aces to return to their old uniform and logo. The Triple X Aces decided to change their name to the Los Santos Aces that year because at that point the Call of Duty clan, Triple X Elite, was slowly disbanding and really had nothing to do with the online portion of the Aces hockey organization. Because not all players were from the same place in real life, it wouldn't be fair to pick one person's city to be used as the home of the Aces. Los Santos was used as the new name because all of the core players did once play GTA 5 and therefore "lived" in Los Santos. Los Santos also has a venue, Maze Bank Arena, that theoretically could be used for ice hockey and so was now considered the home of the Aces. Los Santos would also allow for other benefits because of its fictional nature preventing copyright conflicts.

In terms of the team's performance during the NHL 17 season, they were unable to replicate their NHL 16 success but still won 3 Elite Cups and 1 Pro Cup. Late in the season, Byron and Juliet had a hard time playing with each other to such an extent that Byron gave the Aces GM the ultimatum of keeping him or her on the team. Because Byron was a cofounder and family, he was chosen by the GM to stay so Juliet then returned to her previous team.

NHL 18 was the Aces 5th anniversary year. An alternate color scheme, similar to their first home jersey, was worn for their home games. Many other promotional jerseys were worn throughout this season because of the flexibility in jersey and logo selection. 6 Elite Cups were won this season. Mascots were added to EASHL so "Fred" was inaugurated to the Aces organization as our team's mascot. The name Fred was used because Byron would jokingly name ever unknown person as "Fred". So, to keep the joke going, "Fred" was chosen as the name of our mascot. Of the available options, Fred was set to look like a bird with a pilot's uniform because an "Ace" could be thought of as an Ace fighter pilot. Fred's number was set to 13 because 2013/NHL 13 was our first official season of play.

December 2017: In real life, Byron had been in and out of the hospital for various medical complications mostly caused by diabetes. Unfortunately, on the morning of December 24th, Christmas Eve morning, 2017, Byron passed away in his bed at home at the young age of 54. The family declined an autopsy because of the amount of disease and stress his body had taken over the years and they just wanted him to finally rest peacefully. Plus, they assumed an autopsy would just tell them the cause of death was related to an already known medical condition anyway. Byron's early death was unexpected, but his body was definitely in a state of decline. After his passing the Number 44 was officially retired on January 1st, 2018. The GM decide to retire the number to honor Byron's life and everything he has done for this club. At the end of the NHL 18 season Byron was the first player to be inducted into the Aces Hall of Fame. More information on Byron can be found in the Hall of Fame tab.

Once Juliet heard of the news that Byron was no longer with the team, she respectfully requested to rejoin the team. The request was accepted because she had no previous conflicts with any of the other players and the team now needed a solid replacement on the blue line.

Derek would also join the Aces that year along with 5 more rookies. Derek would immediately prove is worth with is playmaking ability and defensive mindset to win rookie of the year.

NHL 19: The Aces won 5 Elite Cups and 1 Pro Cup. Mourice would decide to move on to another team to play with some "work buddies". He never admitted to leaving because Byron was gone but not having Byron around definitely influenced his decision.

NHL 20 was the last year of the monthly playoff system with 4 different divisions (Amateur, Rookie, Pro, Elite). The Aces won 4 Elite Cups.

By the NHL 21 season, the team's activity had dropped off significantly. The Aces only played half as many games. With only 4 to 5 active players, new real-life adventures and a lack of a good playoff format, the time dedicated to playing chel had declined.

NHL 22: Once again, the games played for the year had declined again to less than half of the NHL 21 season. No major news to report.

NHL 23: For a third straight year the games played for the year had declined again, this time to 3 quarters of the games played in the NHL 22 season. NHL 23 at this point is the all-time low in terms of EASHL activity with only 83 games played for the entire year. During this season the Aces would celebrate their 10-year anniversary by wearing a darker red uniform with the OG sock design.

NHL24: Bailli Boyd made her Aces debut as both a player and a goalie. During this experience we learned that it is possible to get kicked out of an EASHL game due to "poor Teamplay". Overall player activity was very low so not much else happened for this season.

The NHL 25 season story is currently being written. To be continued...