My god if that unrealistic speedboost hitting is still in nhl 25..

Hitting needs a complete overhaul. What was done in 24 was awful. Hip checks lol. Tiny snipers destroying big power forwards. It’s like physics don’t apply in this game.

Gosh hitting was brutal, felt like an arcade game. Thought realism was the target these days, not arcade game mechanics...

Worst part of 2024

The biggest issues for me regarding hitting were:

-Hitter often took longer to recover from the hit than the player being hit

-Hits often never registered due to broken contact mechanics(hitter does the animation, player being hit doesn't even react)

-Truculence once again carried bad defenders who got burned because of the massive "contact/hitbox" it created. You could blow by a defenseman and he clips the loose thread on your number stitching and knocks you over

-Two different hitting buttons was a terrible idea, especially because of how the stick defaults to completing a hit as opposed to just whiffing on the shot attempt.   The input was entered in a shot situation, it should NOT change to a hit without any further controls input.

-Hip checking being one button(common theme) was a terrible idea, it was also OP'd because both the hitter and player being hit could be practically standing still and it would cartwheel the player

Add to problems that against Playstation, its almost impossible to hit them as a Xbox user.  I dont know why but alongside a multitude of other issues with cross platform, PS players seems to have an invulnerability aura where you line up for a perfect hit and just soft of slide around the PS player without actually hitting him. 

Call me crazy, but I think the analog sticks on PS provide quicker response time. 

Avoiding hits in '24 was about holding backhand and pushing LS away from the incoming hit. I think PS users get a slight advantage here because the dead zone on dualshock controllers is much smaller than standard xbox controllers. 

Besides the awful hipchecks of NHL 24 the hitting in 24 wasn't that bad.  I get it some people don't like the new mechanics of hitting.  It's kind of like the hit stick in Madden now.  I hated it at 1st until I actually learned how to time it better and not going after silly hits that probably worked in the past due to hitting aim assist helping so much.  As for realism being the target it's always gonna have an arcade feel to it.   At least for offline players they can adjust sliders to get a more realistic experience.

I don't know why they changed it to the current version. The constant lunging for a hit feels so unrealistic. 

Wait but hitting was the easiest it's ever been in NHL24 so I'm a little confused by your comments about "timing." Especially (with the topic of this post in mind) with the SPEED BOOSTING you get just from holding L2 and Square. The speed-boost hitting was ridiculous in 24. You could be coming down the wing with a fast player and have a realistic advantage on the defenseman's poor gap and then suddenly the D-man would ACCELERATE after going into T-rex mode and destroy you. 

I'm surprised no one has confirmed whether it's in the game or not. That leads me to believe that EA thinks it's a good thing and is leaving it as it was.