EA Sports NHL 14 cover: Vote for Sergei Bobrovsky because he’s awesome and stuff

In honor of the valorous and heartbreaking way, the Columbus Blue Jackets closed the season, we only want good things for the franchise.

Winning the Draft Lottery after losing it last year would be a nice start. Maybe an All-Star Game at some point. A little postseason awards love for Sergei Bobrovsky would be welcomed, too.

But there’s another accolade that could come Bob’s way, and we all can control whether or not it happens: Bobrovsky is one of 32 NHL players in contention for the cover of EA Sports’ NHL 14, the latest title in the World’s Greatest Hockey Video Game series.

Bobrovsky is one of three goalies still in the tournament, trying to become the first netminder since John Vanbiesbrouck in 1997 to make the cover.

Coming up, the field of 32 for the NHL 14 cover voting.

Here they are, via the official Twitter hashtags.

As you can see, none of the odder candidates from the initial vote – Brandon Yip of the Nashville Predators, Lee Stempniak of the Calgary Flames, Carl Hagelin of the New York Rangers, Teddy Purcell of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Matt Beleskey of the Anaheim Ducks – made it through to the round of 32.

So much for winning one for the Yipper …

From EA Sports:

The second round of the EA SPORTS NHL^® 14 Cover Vote, which begins today and ends May 5, shifts to a 32-player leaderboard format where the top 16 vote-getters advance to a 16-player bracket. The winner of the cover vote campaign will be unveiled as the EA SPORTS NHL® 14 Cover Athlete during the 2013 Stanley Cup Final.

Fans can vote for their favorite player at NHL.com/covervote, or double their vote on Twitter during “Double Vote Thursdays” by using these player specific hashtags. Here is a list of the players advancing:

There’s a little of confusion based on what EA Sports emailed and what they have on their site.

EA Sports sent out Jimmy Howard of the Red Wings as a Round of 32 qualifier but they have Pavel Datsyuk in their “hash tags” collection.

We’d like to believe Pavel Datsyuk made it past the preliminary round of voting. It's rather regrettable if he didn't, considering the living embodiment of video game moves has never appeared on a video game cover.