YMMV / NHL Hockey

• Annoying Video Game Helper: The "scouting report" during intermissions, which give out either obvious advice, or poorly-worded "advice", both of which aren't really necessary to win a game.
• Broken Base: The Commentary by Jim Hughson and Don Taylor on the PC releases from NHL 2001-NHL 2003. Hilarious irreverent comedy that increased the entertainment factor, or annoying, useless noise that was distracting and didn't provide the same immersion that past realistic commentary did?
• Catharsis Factor: Your favorite team got beat by a hated rival team? Just play a virtual rematch of the offending game, put every slider in your favour, and then go demolish said rival team in a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • In case that isn't enough, you can even start fights with them and watch your favorite players remove some more of their teeth.
• Growing the Beard: NHL 94, the third game in the series, which is widely credited as not only one of the greatest sports games of all time but is even credited with bringing more attention to the NHL at a time when professional hockey was considered relatively niche compared to American football or basketball.
• Good Bad Bugs: In NHL 09, should the puck ricochet into the net off of a defenseman, the celebration cutscene will show the defender partying with the opposing team.
  • In NHL 13, if you hit a player near the bench, you could potentially send them flying into the stands. Hilariously, EA decided to respond with a tongue-in-cheek official trailer.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Two of the songs on the NHL 10 soundtrack were Green Day's "Know Your Enemy" and Nickelback's "Burn It to the Ground." Fast forward a year later, and they're the theme songs to WWE SmackDown and Raw, respectively.
• Misblamed: Because it the only hockey sports game in the market, people thought EA is the only one who has the license. However unlike Madden NFL nor EA Sports UFC, they are not exclusive to the contract which does not prevent other companies like 2K to pay the license, but rather as uninterested due to hockey market not being popular compare to American Football and Association Football.
• Obvious Beta: NHL 15, the first PS4 and XB1 hockey game, did serious damage to the brand when it was revealed that a slew of content of modes and content were removed from the previous game, and standard features like Playoff mode, manual drafting in Be a GM, and even the Three Stars of the Game award had to be patched in later, making it really obvious that the game was very incomplete upon release. Despite the gameplay itself being lauded as quality NHL, the gutting of many routine features pissed off a lot of fans.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Goaltender controls. Granted, it's not easy to replicate the kinds of movements goalies need to make in real life to cover every potential hole but it still seems like the developers could put in just a bit more effort.
  • Any sort of play along the posts is a particular problem. The hug command basically locks the player to the post making it very difficult to get to the other side of the net in an odd man situation. There's also no good way of using the pad to press against the post in order to stop wraparounds and shots from off to the side. The post hug somewhat helps, but in additions to the locking issue, when combined with the butterfly trigger will leave the 5 hole wide open.
  • The third-person goalie camera means that it is extremely easy to lose track of the puck right in the low slot - i.e., right in front of you.
  • They basically gave up in 13 making most of the controls automatic save for positioning. Reaction has been mixed.
  • Faceoff controls. Even if you set the particular difficulty bar for it low to your advantage, it is still regarded as such by some gamers because of how unintuitive the controls are and the opposing player will usually get his stick to the puck first as soon as the official drops it to the ice.
  • One of the games introduced a new mechanic where the referees could wave off goals if they felt there was goalie interference. The thing is, this mechanic is very finicky, to the point where players from the opposing team could be nowhere near the goalie and the ref would still wave it off, or be inside the crease and the ref wouldn’t wave it off.
• Sequelitis: The series fell hard on this in the eighth generation. After a very strong showing in the prior generation (with NHL 14 even considered to be among the best games in the series), the first in the series to arrive on eighth gen consoles (NHL 15) was a broken mess with glitchy AI, weak graphics, and a number of longstanding features missing. A number of these problems were fixed throughout the next few games, but then the series hit another brick wall with NHL 21. A game that was also riddled with glitches, introduced some downright bizarre physics, and maintained EA's now infamous focus on the microtransaction-laden "Ultimate Team" mode at the expense of improving or evolving the other game modes. It's now safe to say that the series is in the midst of a major Audience-Alienating Era. And it's unclear when (or if) it will come out of it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The fighting mechanics originally looked pretty realistic in NHL 2004, but got overhauled in NHL '07, where fights ended in just one or two punches. It got changed again in NHL '10 to a first-person view, and reactions to it have been mixed. It seems they finally got it right in 14 which switches to a third-person view with a repurposed engine from EA's Fight Night franchise.
• Tough Act to Follow: NHL 2004 is still seen by many as not only the greatest game in the NHL series, but also the greatest hockey video game of all time. To the point that it has developed a passionate modding community that has kept the game alive through a project called NHL 2004 Rebuilt. It's even generally agreed by fans that it's best to just skip the post-2013 NHL games and play NHL 2004 Rebuilt instead.