Own Goal Frustrations
I ran into a stretch of games lately where the rate of own goals ( both for and against ) spiked hard. It's not due to any changes to the game, just coincidence, but it got me annoyed enough to put together a few clips to highlight the issue. There's always going to be bad bounces that go off your own players and into the net and I'm not concerned about that. What bothers me is when own goals are the result of automatic animations that are triggered when a player interacts with the puck. Normally these animations aren't a big deal but there's no situation awareness for them and when they're triggered around the net they can lead to incredibly frustrating own goals. There are similar issues with animations around keeping the puck in the zone at the blue line but they don't result in game-changing outcomes usually.
This is probably the poorest example and I wish I had saved more of the replay leading up to the goal to give some context as to why the defender is on top of his goalie ( basically chasing down a player on a breakaway ). Regardless, the animations that kick in and result in the goal shouldn't be happening here. First the defender unlocks his inner Jedi to warp the puck into his glove while in the crease. Then he perfectly tosses the puck through the five-hole for a goal. No player should be gloving the puck here and they definitely shouldn't be tossing it at the net if they do. As an added bonus, with the puck bouncing around in front of him the goalie is still intent on moving around and not closing up any gaps the puck could slip though.
Here the other team's AI reaches out to I guess try to pick up the puck but ends up dragging it through the goalie and into the net. Again, no player in that situation should be trying to grab the puck in such a way that they'll end up pulling it at the goalie and/or net.
This is similar to the previous clip. The defender gets into an animation where they're picking up the puck but because the animation forces the puck back to the player's forehand immediately without any situational awareness it gets pulled back to and into the net.
And finally the "punished for playing defence" award goes to.... the defender breaking up the passing play by intercepting the pass ( yay! ) and then being locked into an animation where the player kicks the puck towards the net and perfectly through the goalie's five-hole ( booo! ).
