So I’m playing the NHL 22 trial with EA play and I messed with the sliders and superstar abilities a lot in the rosters before playing, even though it’s only a 10 hour trial. Wanted to see what that was all about.
Anyway, I can’t speak for straight out of the box since I messed with puck control and puck pickups and stuff and assigned many more superstar abilities to players throughout the league (for instance just because someone is a 4th liner doesn’t mean they can’t have the faceoff ability and be a shutdown center). Anyway my sliders have lead to a lot more bouncing pucks and over skating and just a looser, more organic game in general and I’m enjoying it.
So I’m playing and I have Kravtsov try a move after gaining the zone and get partially picked off so the puck rolls to the corner, Chytil picks it up with a slight bobble and I had like 2 seconds of space so I try to move left toward the goal line and jam the breaks and spin right toward the circle, but I get closed off and pinned. I push it up the boards to Goodrow and immediately decide to push it further along to the point where Trouba is wide open and… Trouba misses it and it goes out back toward my own blue line.
Now, why am I telling you all this? Well, I took it as an immediate sign that the game was feeling better and more satisfying because the second my wide open defender missed the puck and it went out of the zone I thought “man, Trouba sucks” wherein years passed I’d have just thought “ughh this game”. So clearly, with some adjustments to the ratings and abilities, and tinkering with the sliders the game actually feels somewhat lifelike because it felt exactly accurate that Trouba would miss that keep in, and on similar plays Fox and Lundkvist have picked that same puck up smoothly.
