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I suggest that all speed-boosting abilities, as well as the Truculence ability, should be banned in ECL. Speed-boosting abilities give players an unrealistic advantage, creating bursts of speed that disrupt the natural flow of the game and reduce the importance of positioning, strategy, and overall hockey IQ. Similarly, Truculence provides an unfair physical advantage by making body checks excessively powerful, leading to unbalanced gameplay. Together, these abilities reduce competitiveness and make matches less enjoyable. By banning both speed-boosting abilities and Truculence, gameplay would become more balanced and fair, rewarding skill, passing, and teamwork instead of relying on overpowered x factors. This change would greatly improve the competitive integrity and overall experience of playing this game. As for tipper, there is currently not enough data available, so no stance will be taken on it at this time.

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Honestly, it’s quite simple if the upcoming season is meant to be played primarily on player and team skill. The logical approach would be to only allow Elite Edges, regardless of tier, and perhaps Endurance. A lot of people here are reacting to X-Factors that provide speed boosts, and I agree with Jani on this: the META is something we inevitably force into existence. If forwards use abilities like Wheels, then defensemen are essentially forced to counter with the same, which ultimately leads to everyone running identical builds when ECL begins. This can be avoided by simply removing Wheels and any other X-Factors that create unnatural speed boosts, because there will always be ways to exploit them, as shown in the clips shared earlier. Elite Edges, on the other hand, provides a natural improvement to movement. Allowing the most mechanically skilled players to use it doesn’t give them free offense, it simply rewards skill in terms of what each player can execute. That’s fair, because it’s available to everyone. Different players have different ceilings, and that’s how it should be. In the end, championships are won by the best team play (Last Dance), not by one individual dominating like in the lower divisions. The criticism of Truculence is also completely valid. It’s broken in this game and frustrating to face, whether you’re a forward or a defenseman. Even body checking in general feels overtuned, no matter the attribute. But that has always been the case since NHL 09: with speed and timing, hits land. At the same time, there’s this strange culture where everyone insists on using 72.5 kg builds while expecting to be physically unbreakable. That contradiction is part of the problem. Players choose to sacrifice weight for speed, yet still expect to be rock-solid in physical battles. What strikes me most is that very few forwards in this discussion even consider banning anything other than speed boosts or physical dominance. What about Quick Release or other shooting-boosting abilities? Do we really need them? Season after season, we’ve shown that scoring rates don’t actually drop when we remove those perks. I analyzed last season to see which teams lost offensive production after losing their gold abilities in NHL 25. Only one Elite team saw a noticeable decline, and it was significant. Every other team performed better, likely because they played a different type of hockey that leaned more on team play. If the goal is to create hockey that resembles the real game and rewards teamwork, then the best model is what we had in NHL 21 and 22: let the meta be Elite Edges, not a collection of boosts to speed or shooting. I understand this will cause a reaction. Scoring goals is fun, and some players probably feel they’ve become better scorers in this version of the game thanks to Quick Release. But if forwards are allowed such handicaps in front of the net, then perhaps we should allow Truculence for defensemen—and for defensemen only. The defensive side of the game is being overlooked too. Poke checks are weak, and NHL 26 enables extremely fast passing tempos. Yet we accept that forwards can run abilities that literally reduce a goalie’s save percentage. Shouldn’t that be just as important to discuss? Too often, these debates focus only on offense, when they should be about the whole game. In a tournament played for money, at the highest level of eHockey, we should aim for as few handicaps as possible. Games should be decided by team play and individual skill, not by artificial advantages baked into the game. I genuinely don’t understand why a top player would need a shooting boost in the first place. Using Quick Release is the equivalent of running an aimbot in CS, and Truculence is like wearing reactive body armor. We should strip it back and run tournaments where the only X-Factors allowed are Elite Edges for natural movement and Endurance to maintain tempo. Everything else should be removed. That would allow players to once again use any length or weight they want without being locked into a narrow meta. It would force people to think deeply about their builds, and success would come down to skill and hockey IQ, exactly as it should.

I don't play slow because of the perks. I play slow because of my brain. And I don't use the right stick because NHL didn't have it when I wasn't old.

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Alright, so I made a comeback to 6v6 in the spring after a 5-year break, and spent the summer practicing how to hold controller the right way 🤪 The game’s slowly starting to flow again, so I decided to try my luck in finding a team for upcoming tournaments. 😬 Position: RD Playstyle: Defensive two-way defenseman 😅 Previous experience: Lite / Pro / Elite Aspirations: Lite/Pro Hit me up if you’re interested in trying me out! 🙏☺️ DC / SG / PSN: Seahyena

Just ban everything. So many OP traits this year that make the game too unrealistic. I can also kinda agree with allowing elite edges and nothing else.

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I wouldn’t advocate for banning elite edges since the players aren’t even near as agile as last year but i would be open to banning wheels 100% agree with the truculence thing, it takes like 10 seconds to get up even with full stamina, hitting is way too strong in general even with 70 body checking without truculence I don’t expect tipper to be any different than last year although i haven’t seen it in action yet Goalies seem way too overpowered atm but i don’t know if abilities have anything to do with that

Truculence seems obvious ban as it’s stupidly OP. Not sure about banning skating X-Factors tho since their AP makes them expensive as hell. Elite Wheels and Elite Edges are 70 AP so you can have one of them and almost nothing else. X-Factors across the board seem to be more impactful so by doing this they are handicapping themself. And if you are paying for example 70 AP, yeah it should be pretty powerful and in that case it’s on defenders ability to read this like they have to do with McDavid in real life. In the old X-Factor system this was different as there was no AP tied to the perks. So ofc you would take Elite Edges which was the best single perk of them all as you can see how much AP it costs in NHL 26. I also agree about big tipper as I haven’t had much experience with it but one alarming thing is that some X-Factors are A. locked behind season pass or B. coming in future seasons (who knows when) and will be locked behind battle pass. Goalie X-Factor Show Stopper which is suppose to counter deflections and screens isn’t even in season 1 pass, who know when we will get it. And man Season Pass XP gains are fucked, unless they buff it, I can’t see people reaching higher tiers where X-Factors are locked without paying real money which is fucked up. They are kinda doing FOMO here as no1 seems to know what happens if you are not able to unluck them, will they be locked from you forever? Basically you are getting ~300 Season Pass XP per game and it takes 10 000 XP to reaxh next level (I’m lv 12). And objectives aren’t helping much as I’ve done most of then already. So it’s around 30 games times 50 levels = 1 500 games which in real time takes 500 hours. So yeah fuck EA.

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Biggest problems is not perks, its skaters gameplan. always look for glitch goals, exploit it, and play the same hockey every season. the same way crash net try to hit goalie, glitch in some five hole shit, go for wierd angles to snipe shortsides, do some random moves to make goalies flop or whatever game is allowing you to do. Maybe if you start to respect hockey as game not only broken arcade, all will be fine. Till then nothing realy matters. Learn one thing what goalie never catch, then lets repeat it 10 times in row, its so fun. If we talk from goalie perspective now, there is nothing so op what we could not catch, if not some broken animations, and sometimes goalie just do random shit, but perks op like in 25 i dont feel. We get freedom on movement what i realy like, so if shot is good it goes in because you beated goalie, not because he was freezed. everything is pretty good with goalies and catching shots for now.

The following are the abities that should be banned, in my opinion: - Truculence (and Hipster). Both have the possibility of constantly knocking off opposing player’s sticks. That leads to more rng and less skill. Hitting is already strong enough. - Wheels (and Elite Edges, No Contest). There’s enough (skating) speed in the game already. These abilities take away from the passing aspect of the game and ephasize a single player carrying the puck too much. And these abilities (at least Wheels) - if not banned - also are a must-have, because you need to match up with the meta. To me, if any ability is so op that it’s basically a must-have to keep up, then it should be banned. Makes the game a lot more interesting imo if we see people using different kind of builds. Having Wheels available does the opposite: it just makes everyone pick between the two remaining abilities instead of picking three. - Big Tipper. Ephasizes rng, and less skill. I know getting tip shots is a skill in itself. But this ability still puts too much focus on luck. - Ankle Breaker. Going to need more updates on this. But IF it activates the ”panic reactions” (like it says on the description) on defending human players it should be banned. It’s the same kind of mechanic than the flying sticks with Truculence: it doesn’t promote actually being good at the game. - Unstoppable and Big Rig (and maybe Warrior). If we ban Truculence then these abilities should be banned as well. And like with banning Wheels, banning these abilites promotes passing and team play instead of just carrying/holding on the puck. In addition to resisting hits, Big Rig is really broken as it makes you immune to poke checks while carrying the puck with the hustle protect or L2 protect. ————— It might seem like a long list of bans compared to the past. But I think the big difference this year is that you can unlock any ability with any kind of build. Where as in the past for example if you wanted Unstoppable Force you had to sacrifice your speed among other things to meet the requirements for that. edit: Also I didn’t comment on goalie abilities at all as I haven’t done any research on them. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some that should be banned there as well.

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95% of this community won’t even read this. But 9 out of 10 teams we faced tonight had players running Truc – even in PRO and below. Let’s be clear: that ability is garbage. It ruins every single game from the moment the puck drops. It doesn’t matter if it’s Friday, Thursday, or a random night in the middle of the week – stop ruining the gameplay for everyone else. Spread this within your teams. A gentleman’s agreement, so to speak.

Truculence and Wheels are pond hockey xfactors and should not have place in competitive games. Rest are negotiable. maybe make a poll or survey to get the bigger picture. Then it is up to EA to tune up pokechecking/stick defending before there is only masochist left to play as defenders.

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Up!

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Moikka Etsinnässä olisi tulevalle Ecl kaudelle jengi. Pelipaikkana toimii mikä vain😊. Mutta C paikkaan etsin ensisijaisesti. Olen kuitenkin avoin kaikille tarjouksille. Huumoria ja R2 löytyy. Viime kausi meni Litessä. Core/Lite mutta mieluiten Lite. Otathan yhteyttä dc tai psn: Rpaloluoto

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We are looking starter wingers and one d-man for next lite season If you wanna come tryout contact me or kasperi88 on ps or here

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Repeating my main (recurring) opinion on this topic for a third time, just in case: Also, on that note, when can we expect the ECL schedule for the NHL 26 'calendar year'? ☺️

The abilities don’t have anything to do with player’s height or weight in this version.

I think you can play completely without perks. Because EA keeps making broken perks with super speed or you die from a tackle (Truculence). So play without perks every year so we dont have to have this discussion every year.

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Wheels truculence ja tipper out plz

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Let’s play some hockey first, then decide