September 15^th, 2004 (12:00am) - Dave Warfield, the producer of Electronic Arts’ NHL series since 1997, has revealed that EA has removed him from his duties as producer of their NHL Hockey series and ended his relationship with the company entirely. Warfield had the following to say in a forum post at the cyber-nhl.net forums:

"To the guy that wanted me to get ’kicked in the balls’ during the summit, your wish has been granted, and I am no longer with EA. I hope the new hockey regime will continue to solicit feedback and provide information as I have done in the past. My last act was to get the roster and attribute info to you, and with that I say farewell. I’ll check in to see what you think of the game, but you won’t see me here again, unless Sega hires me. Happy scoring and saving."

According to GameSpot, EA has announced that Ken Sayler will be taking up the producer role for the series. Whether Sayler was the Warfield referred to in his forum post is not known at the present time.

"With the launch of NHL 2005, some team changes were made. Ken Sayler, a long-time EA producer is returning to the NHL franchise,” said an EA representative. “Most recently he was the producer on Tiger Woods PC. As a Canadian he is moving back home to Vancouver to lead the NHL team."