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Dear NHLGamers, As you all know, the new season of ECL is closing in on us. We'll have an exciting competitive season to look forward to. In addition to just playing, we're looking to create the best content yet for you guys to enjoy. Therefore, we're now looking to boost our ranks with some artists! Artist What is expected of you? You'll be working in tight co-operation with the rest of the ECL staff to create various types of art required for the site. Examples could be (but not limited to) various images for streams or special events, pictures for articles or even some cool animations to be used on social media. We're hoping that you have some previous experience in image editing and have a small portfolio to showcase to us in your application. You will also need to have access to software required for completion of your tasks. If you're interested, please contact @Kenu by private message here on NHLGamer.com. Also feel free to refer a friend if it's not for you!

NHL 19 Competitive Review: 'The NHL series has grown up' Welcome NHLGamers to the first ever game review on NHLGamer.com! First of all, you might be wondering how a NHL-only website writing a NHL 19 review makes sense from a traditional standpoint - we're not IGN, GameSpot or one of the other big bangers in the media industry, right? That is the same question we have been asking ourselves, and instead of coming up with a simple overview of all the different game modes and new additions to the game, we decided to go for a so-called 'Competitive Review' that really takes a deeper look at the gameplay and how it affects players' favourite game modes. After all, there might not be a better place for a profound NHL game review thanks to the many enthusiasts and top players that gather on our platform. Whether you're a hardcore player or not, you can expect some interesting insight into game mechanics, World of Chel including the new NHL Ones and EASHL, as well as Hockey Ultimate Team which will be the second focus of our review to cover the 1v1 portion of NHL 19. To take care of this, we tasked @gzell60, our long-time NHLGamer Staff member and NHL player since 2009, to dive in with his review copy. Let's get started! Gameplay: Familiar, but radically different The question is: where do we start? There is a slew of changes players will face when they first pick up NHL 19. Aside from passing and deking, all gameplay elements across skating, poke-checking, hitting, shooting and faceoffs have been adjusted, some more drastically than others. Skating For instance, skating feels like a night and day difference thanks to the addition of 'Real Player Motion (RPM) Tech'. All NHL 18 players are likely familiar with what felt like artificial delay that was present in the skating mechanics, which lead to gameplay being slow and not enjoyable a lot of times - neither did it replicate the explosiveness that actual ice hockey is known for, nor did it allow for many creative moves since they were too predictable and the controls were simply out of place. This time around, the gameplay is noticeably faster and skating feels much more direct and responsive, which gives more freedom when it comes to creating plays and pulling off breathtaking dekes. While I do understand when people argue about it looking too arcade-y, in my opinion it is a necessary trade-off to offer players the tools they need to show their true skill on the ice. After all, EA SPORTS NHL is not a hockey simulation. Once you get the hang of the new skating engine, you will start to notice how severely other areas of gameplay were limited by it before. Stick-checking / Stick-lifting Nothing less important, poke-checking has seen a drastic overhaul for the good as well. For the past 8 years, the so-called 'poke spam' was a tool that was commonly used by the vast majority of players online in defense - simply because mashing the R1/RB button was effective enough to steal the puck or cover open space without too much of a risk of drawing penalties, even if your stick passed players' legs multiple times. The players that perfected their timing and positioning on the other hand did not really see a big advantage on their hand, because poke spam got the job done pretty good as well. NHL 19 will now consistently call tripping penalties for poking through your opponents' legs, which means the often-talked-about skill gap is back. Don't even try to land a pokecheck from behind or from the sides unless you absolutely want to sit in the box. In addition to this, poke-check targeting was dramatically increased, which means that whenever you tap the R1/RB button, your stick will always go in the direction of the puck - before, there had always been some randomness associated to it (probably to make up for the poke spam). If you are perfectly lined up with your opponent trying to pokecheck, you can now expect these attempts to be successful at least 90% of times from my experience. If you are not perfectly lined up and feel like you need to take a risk, do not complain if you have to sit down in the penalty box. In the competitive scene, this is likely the single most anticipated adjustment, whereas many more casual players have complained about receiving way too many tripping penalties. On top of this, you might also be happy to hear that L1/LB spam, which was discovered on NHLGamer (and pointed out towards the development team first!) and commonly used along the boards as a replacement for pokechecks, is now a thing of the past as well. You can still use pass blocking, but compared to NHL 18 tripping penalties will now be called if you hit players' skates. To make up for close encounters where poke spam or pass block spam won't work anymore, the effectiveness of stick-lifts has been increased. Maybe to an extent where sticklifting becomes kind of a spam fest now, seeing how rarely slashing and high sticking penalties will occur even from mediocre positioning, but considering how it's a tool that is commonly used in real hockey too, I feel like we are not too far away from great balancing. Generally, the defensive focus has shifted away from poke-checks to sticklifts and hitting, which was improved drastically too. Hitting One of NHL 18's biggest flaws was its hitting engine, that turned out to be scarily close to broken whenever a big and heavy player was in puck possession. This was most noticeable in 6v6 EASHL, where at least most European top forwards were consistently using the Power Forward build that allowed them to make hitting players bounce off by using puck protection or holding the stick out to the forehand side - even if they were faced by other Power Forward or Two Way Defender classes. As a result, the physical component of the game usually went missing as soon as two skilled parties had to play each other (not only in EASHL, but also in VS and HUT). NHL 19's hitting engine however gets the job done pretty well. In the many hours I played before writing this review, I rarely saw players completely bounce off their opponent unless they were significantly slower or aiming was off. Instead, a stumble animation will now kick in much more aggressively when there is slight body contact, which will not only slow the opponent down, but possibly also make the player lose the puck for a short moment. This does not only apply to charged up hits from a distance, but also if you are skating side-by-side up close, which means hitting is now a viable alternative to stick-lifting. All in all, there is a satisfying balance between all the defensive tools that allow you to tackle a player in any situation. Personally, I'd like to see stumbles trigger even more aggressively than they do now simply because there should never be any kind of incident where body contact does nothing at all, even if it only means losing speed. These incidents do still occur here and then though. Other Besides skating, stick-checking/lifting and hitting, there are also a couple of smaller gameplay adjustments that made it into NHL 19. For one, it feels like both wrist shots and slap shots received a smaller nerf. While longer wind-ups during a slap shot seem to increase shooting power and accuracy and lead to deflected shots more often (probably to punish players that collapse all the time and refuse to cover the point more vigurously), wrist shots from the high slot now seem to miss their target regularly. I can only assume the latter was done to decrease the success rate of a specific glitch shot (short-side from the high slot), although it is only a partial fix and other known glitches still seem to work well enough. Additionally, I suspect an increase in AI learning during breakaways as most of the go-to moves in NHL 18 only seem to work once or twice during a game, whereas a wide variety of different attempts during a single game looks to be more successful so far. Looking at EASHL and other World of Chel modes (which we will get to in a second), skaters are now able to see an endurance bar in the lower left corner of the screen. Using L3/LS to hustle will use up more energy, while gliding or standing still will allow you to recover. The more you get used to this feature, the more it turns out to be a real gamechanger as it brings a whole new level of strategy to the game. Human goalies will be happy to hear their controls are not delayed anymore either, similar to skaters the game plays much more responsive and rewards good vision and quick reaction times with saves from cross crease attempts that were not possible in NHL 18. Lastly, broken sticks were disabled entirely in all online modes. This is just another indication that EA SPORTS are trying to achieve a game that is suited for esports, and on this road they aim to eliminate all RNG ('Random Number Generator', refers to game mechanics that are based on luck) elements. Next to the more aggressive stumbling I mentioned earlier, that brings me to my biggest point of criticism in the gameplay department which is related to glitch shots. Even though the development team tried to tackle these with lowered wrist shot accuracy from afar, they still seem to work very frequently, especially when goalies are handicapped by the goalie screen effect. NHL 19 shines thanks to reducing randomness (e.g. no broken sticks in online games, more accurate poke-checks) and encouraging quick, creative plays (that is what the new skating engine is basically all about), and that is why in my opinion, we need to talk about its existence. Personally, I believe disabling goalie screens altogether would lead to less successful glitch shot attempts, which in turn would further encourage passing, creativity, and skill. Similar to many other gameplay aspects, its a question of how much we are ready to sacrifice realism for competitiveness. Last but not least, I imagine many players would love to see an overhaul of the physics engine. It starts with clothing being static and not affected by player movement and ends with weird puck bounces from shots, rebounds and puck dumps a lot of the time. This is where EA's Ignite engine possibly hits its limits, and I hope and expect Frostbite to add a breath of fresh air not only to the physics department, but the overall presentation of the game in the future. This is of course a minor complaint in a competitive review, but let's not underestimate the effect of a good game presentation on broadcasts or live events! The viewerbase and thus the perception of EA SPORTS NHL as a whole could benefit from it a lot. World of Chel: An EASHL revolution... and much more! 'World of Chel' was one of the buzzwords that was used the most in the NHL 19 marketing campaign during the past few months. With World of Chel, EA SPORTS collected all of the Online Pro modes under one roof: EASHL (3v3 & 6v6 Club & Drop-in games), THREES Drop-In and the two new game modes, NHL Ones and NHL Pro-Am. A new level of customization and progression Aside of the game modes, a lot of work has been done to the underlying player and club progression system, as well as player customization. As you progress through player levels by gaining experience points in any of the modes mentioned above, you will earn so-called 'hockey bags' that include Pro and Casual gear, hairstyles, celebrations, emotes (for goals, big hits and big saves) and Hockey Ultimate Team reward packs from any of four different tiers (common, rare, epic or legendary) in random order. For club games, you are able to earn club hockey bags that include club-related items like logos, jerseys, arenas and arena customization options. While these club hockey bags remind us a lot of loot boxes in other EA games, they cannot be purchased with real money and only be earned by playing World of Chel, which makes the hunt for new gear a refreshing experience that rewards only the players that invest time on their road of becoming the best player out there. The sheer amount of new gear will definitely allow everyone to express their style on the ice, and is a big progress in the presentation area of the game. However, I have to ask the following question: Who thought it would be a good idea to send a player through 6 different selection menus to equip, for example, a hoodie (e.g. Casual -> Clothing -> Tops -> Home -> Hoodies -> World of Chel)? Performance-wise, menus still aren't the greatest of all time and this just adds another layer of complexity to the user experience. Yuck. Next to hockey bags, players are also able to unlock 'loadout slots' and 'traits' by levelling up, which are the two main changes to player build customization this year. While you still have a choice of different player classes (Power Forward, Two Way Forward etc.), they can now be adjusted in terms of height and weight (which affects player attributes to a certain extent) and by adding a maximum of three traits. There is a good variety of traits waiting for you to be unlocked, and each one comes with increases and decreases to player attributes at the same time. For example, you can choose to add to your Balance attribute while sacrificing Wrist Shot Accuracy, or boost your Acceleration at the cost of Agility. Furthermore, there is a second, more mysterious category of traits that allows you to boost a certain gameplay mechanic at a time without any visible effect on hard attribute values. As an example, you could decide to go for more effective deflections in front of the net, increase the accuracy of saucer passes or go for extended endurance. A player class, together with height and weight, handedness and three traits can be saved in one out of a total of five different loadout slots (e.g. one for NHL Ones and four other slots for different positions in EASHL club games). These changes to player build customization are a huge deal and a great mix between the procedure that was used up until NHL 16 (that allowed you to distribute attribute points any way you liked and turned out to be a little broken as several attributes didn't seem to have any effect) and the premade builds that were introduced in NHL 17 to even out the build aspect for increased focus on individual player skill. At the time of writing this, it feels like the development team nailed the balance between all the player builds almost perfectly, although a big chunk of this is also made possible by the many adjustments to gameplay. There's no reason anymore to go with a Power Forward all the time - instead, each player class really shows its advantages and disadvantages more than ever, and the whole building aspect is now more about creating the type of player that suits your personal playstyle best. This is an important prerequisite to becoming a game that is ready for competitive players and tournaments and personally, I feel like this has never been possible as good as this year since the creation of EASHL almost ten years ago. With all the positive things, there are two points of criticism I would like to get out as well. Firstly, I would love to see an even wider variety of traits to choose from, which are more evenly spread out across the player progression system. Currently you will have all traits unlocked before hitting player level 50, which means there are another 150 player levels to go before maxing out - and as far as it looks like, you will only be able to unlock cosmetic items and Hockey Ultimate Team rewards, nothing that influences gameplay. Secondly, now that Hockey Ultimate Team comes with (daily) objectives and milestones (more on that later), I wonder why there is no equivalent for World of Chel. An additional hockey bag a day or some truly unique pieces of gear that can be obtained by completing tasks across all the different World of Chel modes wouldn't hurt nobody, right? NHL Ones: Hockey free-for-all NHL Ones is one of two new game modes that was introduced this year. You are thrown onto the ice with two other opponent players for 3 minutes plus overtime (if needed) where you will battle it out against an AI goalie on a rink size that's approximately as large as the offensive zone of a regular NHL rink. The twist here is that compared to regular ice hockey, where only two parties are fighting for the victory, NHL Ones brings a third party to the ice which also introduces a lot of new strategical elements: If you are in puck possession, you will face off against two opponsing players that start to play defense together to keep you from scoring, and ideally you will do the same whenever you lose possession of the puck. Sometimes you will even find two players team up offensively: Imagine you're at 0 goals, Player B is at 1 goal and Player C is at 2 goals while there are only thirty seconds left to play. In this scenario, you either have the option to play on your own in hopes of scoring two quick goals - which is rather unlikely - or help Player B score the tying goal which would make the match go into overtime, giving you additional time to tie and eventually win. In theory, this kind of experience is a great addition to NHL 19, as it allows EASHL newcomers to quickly get a feel for controlling your Online Pro only and to get a couple of quick level-ups on your way to unlocking traits and gear. In practice however, and especially from a competitive perspective, the story is a little... well, very different. Penalties of any kind are entirely deactivated in NHL Ones. This is a step further from the Threes modes that were introduced last year, where only hitting penalties (boarding and hitting from behind) were disabled. Together with the small rink that does not give you a whole lot of room to show your deking skills in the first place, both defenders can simply run into you and press R1/RB repeatedly to eventually strip the puck away from you. This limits players' capabilities of creating scoring chances so severly that most people will just stay back and play the following waiting game for the entire 3 minutes: Step 1: Stand in front of the net, let Player B deal with Player C and ensure that nobody gets past you when B and C eventually got rid of each other Step 2: Wait for Players B and C to lose energy and desperately start hitting each other along the boards Step 3: As soon as either B and C are down on the ice and cannot get back up quickly due to low energy, get in and hit the remaining player to the ground Step 4: Use your breakaway opportunity and score a goal Talking about breakaways brings us to the next issue. Goalies in NHL Ones are way too inconsistent. Whereas 3v3 and 6v6 bot goalies are known to be incredibly strong on cross-creases and breakaways, and the only real working way of beating them is to refer to several glitch moves, goalies in NHL Ones tend to create highlight saves one time and completely open up the net for a free goal the next time. During my time with the mode, trying out plenty of different traits that increase shooting, deking and breakaway skills, none really made a difference to goalie behaviour - as it is now, you got to live with the fact that all of your breakaways may be saved while both of your opponents will find open nets most of the time (of course, I've seen it the other way round as well). At the same time, you will come across players that try to snipe the goalie from almost blue line distance (from the very back of the rink), simply because it works way too often. Lastly, the progression system in NHL Ones feels rushed and like a single huge missed opportunity. Currently, leaderboards are reset after a specific amount of time (24 hours?), after which you will be sent back to Tier 4. From there, each win will send you up one Tier, while two losses in a row will send you down one Tier. If you manage to get to Tier 1, you will be rewarded with a special 'Diamond Tier' hockey bag once the 24 hour event is over, that supposedly gives you higher chances of earning legendary and epic pieces of gear. So far, this 24 hour tournament is the only kind of progression system there is, and I have to wonder why there are no bigger scale tournaments or other incentives and possibilities to earn some truly unique pieces of gear. After all, we are talking about the same developers that came up with things like Competitive Seasons in Hockey Ultimate Team. Unfortunately, while being an incredibly fun idea on paper, NHL Ones suffers from too many issues and - in its current form - is only good for wasting time while waiting for your teammates to get online for 3v3 or 6v6 EASHL. As I do like the idea, I hope the development team will take a deeper look to find the right gameplay balance and make it a more intruiging experience all around. NHL Pro-Am: Offline 3v3 with your Online Pro Summarizing NHL Pro-Am is easy: EA SPORTS have taken 3v3 EASHL offline and allow you to step on the ice with your personal Online Pro to take on other Threes teams consisting of some of the best hockey players there have ever been. While the majority of games are on for three periods with two minutes each, there are also some final tournament games that require you to score three or five goals to win. Along the way you will play around 50 games which will earn you 300 experience points each and also allow you to unlock a few Pro-Am hockey bags. There is a decent amount of player level progress to be made here, so if you are all about leveling up your character as quick as possible and without much effort - the difficulty is rather low and your bot teammates will get the job done most of the time - you should definitely take a look at NHL Pro-Am. Together with NHL Ones, I imagine it's a good way to get prepared for EASHL. Ones allows you to nail the basics in player movement while Pro-Am gets you some initial teamplay practice. Even though both game modes are nothing special, I like this approach of encouraging more players to get into NHL teamplay. "Where there are no bot players involved, players can show their true skill" is something that was mentioned by EA SPORTS NHL producer Sean Ramjagsingh in one of the interviews with NHLGamer during the NHL 19 Producer Tour in Stockholm and Helsinki at the end of August, and you can clearly see that this is what the development team is striving for with World of Chel. With that being said, let's check how all the changes to gameplay affect 3v3 and 6v6 EASHL in NHL 19. EASHL: Sport gaming's best competitive mode, now even better From a game mode perspective, EASHL is pretty much still the same as in NHL 18. You will be able to play 6v6 or 3v3 club games, or join drop-in lobbies for both versions in case you are out of teammates. Challenge lobbies haven't made it into the release version of NHL 19, we reported about it earlier, but they will be back with the next game update in October. For some reason, playoff club games are also still available (does anyone really still play those?) - as I said, it's EASHL as you know it, with one neat addition: Clubs can now play 6v6 and 3v3 games at the same time, as they are now seperated into two different locker rooms. Personally, I know the feeling of having 9 players online at the same time all too well, and being able to rotate between the locker rooms without requiring anyone to pause until a game is over is a great plus. In terms of gameplay, I think we can all agree: the skill gap is back! And in EASHL, it is where it reflects the most. Now that poke spam is a thing of the past, the gameplay is all about positioning. As players in general are less confident in pulling off successful pokechecks and will resort to hits and sticklifts more often, this opens up a lot of newly gained space to create passing plays. Thus, forwards are well-advised to rotate as much as possible to create chances and find open passing lanes before they are struck down by a hit (remember, no more bouncing off!), while defenders will be rewarded by moving around more intensely and accurately to intercept passes (which now seems to work consistently if you are positioned correctly). Together with the new skating engine, that sped up the entire game in general and allows for more explosive movement, all of this becomes a much harder, but also more enjoyable task at the same time. Although the improvements far outweigh the negatives, it is only fair to mention them as well. Shot deflections, especially with the Deflection Master trait (increased your ability to deflect shots) being equipped, become nothing short of ridiculous sometimes. Slapshots from the blue line that would otherwise horribly miss the net get redirected towards the net, while the deflecting player is literally 10 feet or less away from the shooter. This and many other examples kind of break the idea to encourage passing and creativity, and deserve a solid nerf in my opinion. Outside of that though, there is not a whole lot to complain about. You still get occasional weird puck bounces, occasional magnetic sticks that allow players to magically pass through two defending players and occasional goalie interference calls that make you question some of the animation work going on, but all of that a lot less regular than in NHL 18. Still though, it feels like we are hitting the Ignite engine's limits in this department, and I am looking forward to the introduction of Frostbite that could potentially help with more accurate puck and player physics to make another big step towards an esports ready NHL game. This time around though, EASHL is very close to being exactly that. A mode without bots that allows players to show their true skill. And a mode that for now refuses to acknowledge this skill, as EASHL leaderboards are sorted by played games instead of competitive rating, which means a team that quits games 100 times in a row would be ranked #1. We talked about some weird design choices already and we'll add this one to the list. (At the time of writing this, EASHL has been suffering from severe matchmaking issues which kind of overshadow the whole experience. Players are frequently dropping out of lobbies due to 'dressing room errors' when the game loading screen kicks in, and there is no ETA for a fix, nor was any workaround discovered so far. EASHL matchmaking has an infamous record of issues in the past, from all game long home captain lag a couple of years ago, to matchmaking refusing to work altogether when teams idle in the dressing room for too long (which seems to be present still). The EASHL playerbase is definitely a little scarred, and many people are asking how these issues are still popping up and not discovered and fixed ahead of game release.) Hockey Ultimate Team: Great framework, joyful gameplay with issues Just like the headline, I believe it is worth splitting up the review about Hockey Ultimate Team into two parts: the framework, and the gameplay (which applies to Online Versus too). Objectives & Milestones: Progress matters In terms of the game mode, the framework as I like to call it, we are looking at various improvements over last year's edition of HUT. What stands out most in my opinion is the newly introduced objectives and milestones system, which rewards you with coins, loan players, packs and (hopefully!) yet to be discovered other goodies for the hardcore players that invest hundreds of hours each year into collecting player cards and building their dream team. Next to the obvious milestones (e.g. score X goals, play X games), there is also a daily category that unlocks specfic challenges for 24 hours only, like completing a set or buying items off the auction house. The amount of challenges is huge, and by the time I have finished this review, I was not able to tell whether they can actually come to an end, or if they expand indefinitely. In the past, Hockey Ultimate Team always felt like a tough grind when it came to obtaining new items, which eventually put me off after a month or two. With the implemenation of a steady flow of coins and items, this has changed into the right direction a lot, and I see myself coming back just to complete some of the daily challenges. Players that really go all-in with Hockey Ultimate Team are now rewarded even more, as the amount of coins they obtain by simply playing the game rises drastically. In that regard both casuals and competitive players will benefit a lot. Next to the objectives and milestones, a new feature that proves to be much more useful than it first sounded, are pack probabilities. When you hover over a pack from the store, pressing the Triangle/Y button allows you see the likelihood of obtaining a player of a specific overall rating range. It adds a lot to the transparency of the entire game mode, and is a good indicator on what to spend your coins and points (bought with actual money). Team building: Where less is sometimes more Talking about the contents of packs, players now come with much lower overall values compared to NHL 18 (I'll get back to that later on), and the development team also explained they were going to limit the amount of versions a specific player can have, for example Team of the Week specials. Looking back at NHL 18, where recently released player cards were essentially worthless after a month due to frequent releases of updated cards that came with increased overall strength, I think this is a good development. One could almost compare it with PS3/360 era legend cards for EASHL players that required you to play a ludicrous amount of games just to be able to keep up with other players and teams out there. In the end, it's always about finding the right balance between giving players something they can work for while still making sure skill is the deciding factor to win games. If you want to put in the money or work to obtain an ultra rare, one-time special edition of a player, that's totally fine - but having a team of top-rated gold rare players should not put you at a disadvantage as early as 3 months after release. On top of that premise, I also hope this limitation is going to affect collectibles and sets as well. Remember all the Flashback, EVO, Prime, Milestone, TOTW... ... ...collectibles from NHL 18? Yes, it really got out of hand quickly. When we take a look at the gameplay in HUT and Versus, we should likely start off by going back to player overall values. Whereas Evgeni Malkin was rated 88 overall in NHL 18, he is now an 86 overall in NHL 19. Another example? Sidney Crosby was reduced from 90 overall to 87 overall. The same effect will probably also apply to special editions of players in the future, which means players rated above 94 overall are thankfully not the standard anymore. This is good news for two reasons. First of all, it brings the player base closer together so focus is on skill instead of player strength. Secondly, certain game mechanics tend to break as soon as you get players with very high ratings on the ice, such as shooting and skating. Glitch shots can be abused even more frequently, and insane values on acceleration and agility made it easy to simply skate past players with regular values, making it impossible for the opponent to actually defend. And this brings us back to the first part of the review: Thanks to lower overall values, all the gameplay changes to skating, hitting and stick-checking stay entirely relevant in 1v1 modes as well. Focus on skill over strength? Yes, I mentioned it a couple of times already. Let me be straight with you: Hockey Ultimate Team and Versus are a joy to play. Similar to World of Chel, the improvements make a huge difference - NHL 19's 1v1 hockey is fast, varied, creative and unforgiving, though there are also a couple of issues that become apparent very quick. While the AI has been tuned to not take penalties anymore - or as one of our ECL staff members used to say, "EA are stopping the player from randomly getting punished for no reason from their AI just going bush league on a guy and slashing his face off" - this does not really work 100% of the time. During the two dozen HUT games I played for my review, I came across a few instances where the AI would still come up with a slashing or tripping penalty. As it was announced differently though, it is likely something that can and will be fixed with an update in the near future. Outside of these rare occurences, this change is another one for the good. Similar to goalies in NHL Ones, there is also some inconsistency to be noticed with HUT and Versus goalies too. While breakaways are fine and do not require any tuning from my perspective, the story is a different one when it comes to one-timers. From my experience, a one-timed slapshot after a cross crease pass, where a player's stick faces towards the inside (left-handed right wing or right-handed left wing), is pretty much a guaranteed goal. If your player's stick faces towards the outside though (e.g. left-handed left wing), one of two things will happen: Either will your shot miss the net horribly, or the goalie will ensure to save it in Spiderman-like fashion by all means possible. The distance to the net is not factored in either, so be prepared to get robbed on wide open nets as well. Interestingly enough, I spoke to other players about it (including the NHL Gaming World Champion, cheers Eki!) who all made a slightly different experience. One player was having issues with the supposed 'correct' handedness while seeing a bigger success rate with off-hand shots, whereas another player wasn't happy with low success rates on all kinds of one-timers. At this stage it is probably too early to tell what exactly is causing these different reactions, so time will tell if one-timers really need an adjustment in the long run. And then there's also the tiresome topic of puck ragging (players holding onto the puck in their own zone, preferably around the net, when they are in the lead). It is still present in NHL 19, and as far as it looks like, there are still way too many players that do not shy away from abusing it. Unfortunately, the AI still isn't smart enough to help pressure an experienced puck ragger intensively enough to regain the puck most of the time. While I do admit that this is something that may not be possible at all, the development team should keep trying to come up with other measures to tackle this issue. Whether it's a system that recognizes this behaviour and kicks a player the 2nd time after he received a warning, or if it's a severe decrease to momentum, passing and puck control once a player is in possession of the puck for an excessive amount of time in their defensive zone - I'm not sure what the best solution is. Anyhow, it should not be brushed under the carpet. Mic..macrotransactions: Dear developers, we need to talk Last but not least, a word about microtransactions. Or macrotransactions. As a reviewer, I received my copy of NHL 19 for free, so I decided to invest some actual Euros into HUT packs. More precisely I purchased 2 Ultimate Packs for 25€ each, which come with a whopping 30 players, 6 guaranteed rares and 17 guaranteed gold cards. Unfortunately, my best pull in there was one 84 overall Panarin, while the rest of the players were 81 overall or lower. While that could simply be bad luck, we are still talking about someone spending another 50€ on top of the 60-70€ for the entire game, and in that regard the value for the money is atrocious. On the opposite side, making use of the Gold Common to Gold Rare trade-in set gave me an 86 overall Evgeni Malkin, an 85 overall P.K. Subban and an 84 overall Auston Matthews. Purchasing five gold common players off the auction house is a matter of a couple thousand instead of 150000 coins (or 25€), and either I was incredibly lucky those three times (in a row!), or there are once again some serious balancing issues going on. Is there any safe way of improving matters without causing more problems in other areas? I'm not sure. In terms of the Ultimate Pack though, reducing the player count to 10 and increasing probabilities for 83+ overall rated players by 10% would probably change pack rewards for the better. And I could feel more confident about spending money on packs again. Conclusion NHL 19 does so many things right, it feels hard to criticise. The skating is on point, the new defensive meta is the most meaningful and welcome change in years, and with the introduction of World of Chel, EA SPORTS have finally started to show some love for the most skill-based and intriguing game mode there is. Since EA SPORTS NHL's incarnation, this year marks one of the biggest leaps forward, thanks to acknowledging core player feedback and a lot of attention to detail. Yes, there are still some imbalances and yes, there are still a couple of quirks - but in the end, they are far outweighed by pure joy. The NHL series has grown up. Now, it's EA's turn to prove they are serious about it with NHL 20. NHLGamers, what do you think? Of course, every single one of you will have a different take on several parts of the review, and I am very curious to hear about them. To me, it was very important to share the review with a couple of other players beforehand, that I know are as passionate about the game as I am, so it is as representative as possible from an ECL community perspective. Do you believe there is anything we failed to mention? Do you possibly disagree with one or more statements entirely? Tell us in the comments below! @gzell60