Recent Discussions
Suggestions for Career and Franchise Mode Improvements in NHL 26
The Career mode in NHL 25 lacks several key elements to make the experience more immersive and realistic. It would be beneficial to add richer interactions between the player, the coach, the managers, and the team. Currently, the training sessions are too limited and could be much more realistic and impactful on player development. Additionally, allowing players to start very young, at age 14, in summer camps or junior leagues, would add a deeper dimension to a player's career. Furthermore, the Franchise mode could be improved by allowing players to start in any league, including those not currently available in the game. This would provide more diversity and strategic choices, allowing players to build a career at their own pace and create new dynamics for each team. These improvements would greatly enrich the overall experience of the game, offering more flexibility and opportunities to shape the player's journey. While it may be too late for NHL 25, these suggestions could be considered for NHL 26 if the developers are open to them. I hope a dev will answer my message or not :D
Scoring
Backhand, forehand, backhand, goal. I feel trying to make good plays and set up 1T shots, or anything else just seems far less effective than just backhanding for every goal.. it's sad that it can even be done shortside because these goalies can't bother to hug the post. This is why we either need some type of dynamic goalie behavior patterns or some type of club created thresholds so that your goalie will behave differently than other goalies and scoring can become diversified a bit more. Ideally I'd play with/ against human goalies but not many want to play goalie, esp for any long stretch of time. This is the one part of the game that needs the MOST attention paid to it. It's brutal. We will be 2 v 0 and instead of using a 1T we pull off and let the other get the backhand goal because it's almost 100% where as even a seemingly perfect 1T chance you risk a crazy acrobatic save or your guy messing up the shot. This is prob the worst I've seen this game as far as 1v1 on the goalie. I actually think the goalie plays better in threes eliminator. I mean I'm using the constant backhand spam too because I feel I have no choice if I want to win but man does it limit any creativity.. goaltending in this game needs a lot of work. It also needs to REALLY reward goalies for playing that position. I'm not sure how but it's a thankless job haha!Stick colour and update ELH jersey
There are a total of 69 sticks in the game for players to customize. Would it be possible to add the latest Bauer Hyperlite 2 model in black? Also, is it possible to select or add color variants to the sticks? Bauer for example (blue, green, red, black) the same for CCM. Many players have sticks colored according to the club's colors. Another thing, why are the latest jerseys not updated only in the Czech Extraliga in March, almost at the end of the season? Other leagues have been updated a long time ago, but in the Extraliga, last year's jerseys are still there.
NHL 26 WISHLIST
I'm a big fan of the games and am a Be A Pro merchant. I've played the last 10 NHL games, and have been wondering why it's so easy to become the captain in Be A Pro. The few things I want for NHL 26 Be A Pro are very simple: NHL 19 mechanics where it took 3-4 seasons to get the A, and 2-3 seasons after that to get the C. Since then, you could pretty much immediately become captain after a single season in every Be A Pro. I would love to see them implement these mechanics into the next game. It not only gives you something to work towards, but also adds a level a realism to the game. Please give less dialogue in Be a Pro and make it easier to sim. With so many random side missions and interactions, it makes it difficult to want to really grind the career and play for a while. NHL 19 is a perfect example of what my ideal Be A Pro would look like. Fix the Low, High, and Fixed camera angles to make them not spin in 360 degrees. Why not just make it like the FIFA career camera?
Add better mechanics for switching players
I'm getting so tired of trying to switch to a defencemen that is the closest player to the puck and for some reason I can't switch to them. So many times I've been scored on because I can't switch to the one person that is closest to the puck to try and poke the puck or block a shot, instead I switch to someone chasing the puck and a few times someone thats just not anywhere close to the puck at all. This system needs to be reworked, possibly something similar to icon passing but for switching players that way we can switch to the player we actually are wanting to switch to without the game deciding.
This is hockey not Fortnite
For 26 can we PLEASE stop with these micro transaction costumes and ridiculous emotes. I think we all remember loading into a game back in the good old days when it showed the stadium rockin’, the players skating out of the tunnels, and it felt like a big game. Now playing EASHL feels like I’m deciding where to land in a battle royale with alien and skeleton characters and the weird animation where it shows all the players in a line doing supernatural dances and whatnot. I really don’t care about the idea of micro transactions. If people want to spend the money and EA wants to make it, that’s fine. As long as it still feels like I’m playing a hockey game. When and why did we go away from that? CoD just announced they’ll give players the ability to turn off skins so while other people might be using ridiculous characters, any users with them turned off would see just regular looking soldiers to give the game an actual realistic feel. At the very least NHL 26 should have this option. I just want to play hockey… Also while I’m on a rant, playing with EASHL CPUs is brutal. That’s basically the only game mode I play, but I messed around with the Four Nations on superstar and was shocked to discover that CPU defensemen CAN actually stop a rush and on offense they CAN actually make a decent play. Why not instead of having whatever it is 56 OVR CPUs all the way through they maybe get progressively better as you move up in divisions? The AI is capable of being at least somewhat useful, but as it is now they are invisible as long as the users speed is above like 86 and the breakaway attempts are comical. Just make them at least decent. Also, just two more quick things, teams should be able to customize their CPUs. We shouldn’t need to see Lee, Jackson, Wagner, Lehmann, etc. every game. Let me customize it the other guys on the team. To include name, number, gear, celebrations. Why not? And finally, this is a small one, when I create an EASHL team, please let me choose a logo right off the bat. I like the team progression with unlocks, but it’s so frustrating to have to wait forever with hockey bags to finally get our team logo. We’ve had the same team and same logo for years, why am I waiting around for months of gameplay in order to finally put the logo on our jerseys just because we didn’t luck out and open it in a bag early on…
What happened to NHL25?
I can't be the only one to think this years game started great but is now seemingly heading slowly back toward feeling like NHL 24 gameplay/sliders, etc. Especially after the latest patch that dropped a week or so ago. And that is ABSOLUTELY NOT a good thing at all. My 6v6 club has played together since 2013 and with NHL 24, we were at the brink and extremely close to quitting. However we played it out and hoped a new year and a new game would bring change. And it did. The game felt different and great. But now we find ourselves a month or so out of release and a couple update patches in and this years game is slowly but surely feeling very familiar. And not in a good way. It's playing/feeling very very much like NHL 24. The game we left in the rearview and was optimistically hoping we would never have to see again. But here I find myself in the forums. Pleading and hoping someone will read this and get the feedback to devs. Hopefully to get some changes going back in the right direction before this game turns back into the garbage of yesteryear that we all loathed so much. If the gameplay/sliders continue back in that NHL24 direction and nothing changes, I sadly fear we will most certainly be done early this year. If you agree or have similar opinion, please like this post 👍🏻 as it will certainly get more admin attention/notice. And please leave a comment if you and you're crew have similar opinion. Take a min and reply. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. Nothing changes without giving EA NHL devs your feedback & thoughts. Thank you in advance 👍🏻NHL 25 WORLD OF CHEL
When is the old ducks ans kings logos gonna be changed to the new logos in creations?? When will we get new jersey designs in creations to create club jerseys. And where is the 2025 winter classic and stadium series jerseys???? And HOW HAS THR ATLANTA THRASHERS LOGO not been in vintage nhl logos in creations ? We don't need all 20 of the kings logos where is the thrashers????
Managers
Since EA this year has presented face packs to some coaches. The only problem being is. The coach pool is made up of non nhl coaches. In 26. Why not change the coach concept to managers. Leave the coachs and their face packs intact. But use actual NHL managers and their face packs. The same synergies can be applied to the managers. The way it is now. No realism. You acquire a coach (non nhl) for the synergy. Be inclusive. Add managers to the game as well. Be much more interesting having various managers switch from team to team. Also the coach item would be replaced with manager.
Hitting bugs, weird penalties
Probably been discussed to death but im new here. I’m getting penalties consistently where I’m trying to shoot the puck and I end up hitting the person standing behind me. Another one that happens a lot are boarding calls where the boards aren’t even in play at all. Charging penalties where you watch the replay and they seem perfectly fine. Luckily I dont take any elbowing penalties like last year’s game. This stuff happens a lot, seems like it’s been an issue from the geckoEAHSL drop in, game sabotaging trolls
Run into a lot of players who tank the game on purpose for laughs. I think we’ve all dealt with trolls who pull the goalie and try to score on their own net. People who offside you on purpose. can anything be done about players who ruin games doing this? It would be nice if we had a voting system to kick the offenders or some algorithm that could tell when players are purposely playing the opposite of a good faith player. I know the game is all about fun, but no one has fun when this happens except the troll who gets away with it.details for swedish teams in custom franchise.
I've noticed some things in NHL 25 when i play with swedish teams in custom franchise mode. I understand that the devs got other stuff to focus on, but small stuff like this can be a bit boring to notice when I enjoy to play all my games and not sim them. Most of the teams from hockeyallsvenskan get Anaheim ducks center ice logo when they play as the home team in custom franchise. Some minor details on team equipment such as wrong colour on team gloves or wrong colour on captains letters. (Frölundas gloves and Skellefteås C/A letter on top of my mind) Not related to teams, but right handed goaliesticks (Bauer is the most noticeable imo) doesn't mirror properly, so the bauer logo isn't visible. been like this since NHL 23 at least. Some players got the wrong height and weight, but this isn't that bad. You used to be able to edit stuff like that yourself back in the older NHL games. How come that got taken away from the games? Love custom franchise mode! Being able to play more than 1 season with my hometown team from SHL and edit the player ratings to match the real world SHL has been great since NHL 24 :)
Goalie masks and equipment in franchise
I can’t be the only one bothered by this… Any Goalie drafted in franchise seems to default the Anaheim Ducks mask, No matter what team you are. That’s annoying enough but when you fix it in “edit player” the goalie equipment goes Matte Black every single time. Been like this for months… small(ish) detail but mad annoying.CAP Menu Suggestions NHL 26
Long time customer here, rarely post. Just a couple quick suggestions for NHL 26 in terms of the Create A Player menu. Can we get an option to assign the team right in the player Details menu somehow? I create 100's of players and it's a pain to scroll all the way down to W or Z to assign the team after they're created. It's an extra step. It would be much easier if there was just an option inside the Details page. We already have 'Pro Team' and 'Drafted By.' Maybe change 'Pro Team' to 'Pro Rights' and add 'Current Team' or something similar. I like that the 'Year Drafted' gives you options based on birthday but it's out of order. You have to set the birthday way lower in the menu and then scroll back up to set the 'Year Drafted.' The amount of times I've forgotten to do this can't be counted. Maybe move Height, Weight, and DOB higher in the menu to solve this. Similar to 'Year Drafted', 'Player Type' is out of order. If you're creating a defensemen you have to scroll past 'Player Type', set the position, then go back up. Simply reversing these two options would solve this. Not a big deal but it would be nice to set the 'Country' first, then have a list of applicable States, Provinces, Cities available based off of that selection. It would make creation slightly quicker but more than anything I think it would just be a nicer feature. When creating prospects, if you make a underage player from Sweden, you can't assign him/her to a team, but they appear in the Franchise mode Entry Draft in the SHL later on. This is actually fine and it works for Russians, Czechs, Fins, Americans, etc but not for Canadian prospects (15yo or younger). For some reason those players appear in Rest Of World. There are current 15 year olds playing the the WHL that you can't assign there. Can we just make the Canadian CAPs default to the CHL like all the other prospects do with their nationalities, or even better the particular CHL league based on whatever Province they're from? My biggest request. Can we please get the computer faces shown throughout the game (not just CAP's but any player missing them). I exclusively play franchise and after 3-5 years I always lose interest because so many of the players are just blank faces. It severely effects the look of nearly every menu in Franchise Mode. I deal with contracts/copyright at work so I know that getting the actual pictures is more complicated than people realize but this could be a nice consolation. At minimum, maybe just the CAP's. I'm not a programmer so I don't know if any of this is easily done but I hope this gets passed on to EA and some of it is considered. I'm hopeful since I've seen some other suggestions added, like the 'Play by Play Name' auto filling (thanks btw). Love the game. Keep up the great work.Bad points counting in franchise mode
I'm playing an expansion draft in franchise mode and the game very often miscounts Canadian player points. Example: during a game I score a hat trick and two assists with Hischier, but the scoreboard in the menu only adds one point. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (I think it forgets to record the 2nd assist most of the time). Could you tell us if you plan to fix this or are you just ignoring it? I'm just wondering if I should still hope that you'll fix it someday or if I can give up and focus on other things.
