Goaltending
EA devs, please update your goaltending so they actually stop a puck. Also please remove skill based one timers as people just sit there and spam them forever. Sincerely everyone playing this trash ...
Forum Discussion
In offline play goalies are actually better in most ways, still some odd animations that leave me shaking my head on what it was thinking (but that is maybe a handful of games out of the 75+ I have played)
Goalies on superstar difficulty and some catered sliders are fine for the most part. A few goals here and there with odd animations and some where a goalie has a bad game (3 goals on 5 shots - but this is actually not a far stretch from real life). In a game I played last night offline, I was out shot 39 to 27 and lost 1-0 in overtime, with both goalies making some crazy saves to keep it going.
On average games are 27-22 in shots with a score from 3-1, 3-2 to 4-3, fairly normal overall - plus I am not using a team full of star players and only have one player with a gold xfactor.
It seems like a bigger issue for the online side of it, I am not sure what sort of difficulty it could be set to as default though.
You and I are playing very different games then. I’m averaging ~20 SOG angainst, and I’m lucky to see a GAA of 3 and a SV% of .875. I have an 87 OVR goalie in Wallstedt, and this guy is rough. Aside from that, the amount of goals I see that goalies stop 90% and it richocets in is absolutely wild to me. And it’s even worse with the crazy amount of aggression the CPU has.
I’ve played with the sliders, and nothing changes. First game in years I can say that I’ve basically lost all interest in playing until a patch comes through…
I am using Ingram (86) no xfactors and Vejmelka (84) also no xfactors (I am using a version of Utah, so my team stats are not overly high either)
- Ingram has SV% .875 and 2.50 GAA - record of 12-11-3, Vejmelka .890 SV% and 2.21 GAA with a record of 6-2-2.
From what I have seen in NHL games going back to at least NHL 20, the SV% have been not always something you can look at unless you are more just simming games (I am not sure why that is the case either). In past games it was usually the AI getting 9-15 shots max to the 25-35 shots for my team and losing the game 3-2 or something (NHL 22 was bad for this), so I feel that was part of the issue. GAA is usually more of a normal stat I judge my goalies on as it seems to reflect the gameplay better overall.
I know that both my goalies and AI team goalies do have issues where pucks will bounce off the blocker or glove and in but I see it even between my team and others overall (depending on the goalies overall). Plus those type of goals do happen in real life, also goalies having bad starts to games (3 goals on 5 shots per example). I tend to find when stuff like that is going on, I'll take a timeout, see if that helps, if not ill switch goalies. Not sure if team chemistry has any affect this or not ( I turn morale off as its still not really functioning and hasn't for many years).
I have learned to play a very defensive game and use the breaks or mistakes the AI does to get rushes or chances on net.(GFPG are 3.14 and my GAPG is 2.44)
I also make sure to keep my lines fresh so I'm not left out with a tired line. I find the times I do leave them out too long it tends to end up in the back of the net.
"crazy amount of aggression the CPU has" when it comes to this - I can't say what is different. They do push for the puck and with the lower speed and stamina I have learned to do more quick passes instead of single player skates up the ice
- I do turn down the AI learning and adjustment to make it more level to the experience that works for my gameplay.
