NHL 27 Connected Franchise: 32-Team Leagues, Crossplay, and a July 22 Playtest

NHL 27's Connected Franchise opens for community playtesting on July 22, putting the series' most-requested mode in players' hands seven weeks before launch.

Sign-ups are open now, and EA SPORTS has launched the NHL 27 Feedback Portal alongside them, a dedicated place to tell the developers what matters most and help steer where the mode goes next. SportsGamer users can secure playtest access through our collaboration with EA; the full sign-up guide, including what follows the Connected Franchise phase, is here.

What's in at launch

The launch version is taking concrete shape. Connected Franchise supports leagues of 3 to 32 human-controlled teams with full crossplay, so a group split between PlayStation and Xbox can share one league.

Custom rosters built offline, created teams and players included, can be uploaded and shared across consoles. Season length, game rules, sliders, salary cap ranges, and playoff formats are all adjustable, and games can be played in any order.

Commissioners get a dedicated tool suite: moving users between teams, overriding rosters, advancing season phases, approving trades, and resolving game outcomes. Online leagues rarely die of hockey; they die of administration, and this feature list reads like EA knows it.

What EA hasn't promised

Just as telling is what EA hasn't committed to. Fantasy draft, player development, aging, and deeper franchise simulation are filed under potential future areas shaped by player feedback, which is hard to read as anything but: not at launch. A dedicated Connected Franchise walkthrough from EA SPORTS  is promised soon.

Playbooks and team identity

The team playbooks, built from NHL EDGE data, now come with names and examples. Modern forechecks like the 2-1-2 Split and Stack arrive. Florida and Los Angeles lean on dump-and-retrieve pressure, while New Jersey and Anaheim carry the puck in. In the trailer, Carolina's forecheck clogs exit lanes and the Kings hunt screens, tips, and rebounds at the net.

Cohesive Team AI sends linemates chasing dump-ins, tightens gap control, and breaks up cross-crease passes and breakaways. Benches react to the scoreboard too: trailing teams stretch the ice in the third, leading teams clog the neutral zone. EA groups that adaptation under Contextual Strategy Shifts.

What's still to come

Still to come are the Connected Franchise walkthrough, a Presentation & Gameplay Deep Dive that EA says will include quality-of-life updates, and a developer Q&A. NHL 27 launches September 11 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.