NHL 25 Official Franchise Trailer | Deep Dive

Please, please let us fully edit players, I am sick of simulating entire seasons just to see how players will look because I don't want to take all the time to build teams, just to see a group of clones/ grey balding old looking men celebrate with the cup. My teams are always 70% face scanned players, which does look nice I can say.

I'll be cautiously optimistic for what they will do with it. For me no matter what they add or how flashy they make it look it, will come down to the substance that is added and if they finally take the time to fix the bugs/glitches that have been in Franchise mode going back to NHL 21, at least.

 This a list of some of the ones I know of off the top of my head

-AI teams not being able to handle their own RFA's properly - by signing UFA's and then leaving the player on the team. This can be unrealistic and even cause good players who would get some sort of deal even if its only a one year deal to not play or force me to trade for them so they are not sitting out the year. 

- To them not being able to handle the amount of contracts per team within the salary cap where as some teams could have as little as 24 out of 50 in NHL 24.

- To them using a forward on defense cause they don't have the same functions as a user controlled team to call up players or proper ones. Two instances here is having players in reserve and then slotting one of them in (forward), cause they don't have an extra defense men called up to using a 45 overall prospect goalie in an NHL regular season game (id guess cause they were med elite potential) instead of leaving them to grow in a lower level league and bringing  up the actual backup (78-80 overall) potential goalie they had on the AHL team. 

Honestly, the list can go on but I'll hope that they address this along with making meaningful changes to the mode (some of which has been missing from the game that existed in prior NHL titles by EA).

I have a couple of questions after watching the deep dive video. 

1- Can I turn off morale like previous games? (I still feel EA’s morale engine is not perfect, for example when the morale lost told me Casey Cizikas, Matt Martin and Cal Clutterbuck all disliked each other even though they played on the same line for almost a decade)

2- Can I fully edit my strategies regardless of the head coach? I’ve been asking for a couple seasons since it’s been taken away and I saw it was grayed out yet again before you had to go in to talk to the head coach to change

3- Does everything have to be conversation based? Feels too tedious and long for someone like myself who plays every game to have to do in between games

4- will the CPU AI logic actually sign their RFA’s and also will there be more realistic contract negotiations? Prior games had players asking way too much money for roles they were not filling.

Noticed the ticker at the bottom still has instances of lag - why does this keep happening?

First off, this has given me hope that there is going to be a good franchise mode experience in this game along with the changes to gameplay as well - so hats off for that. 

There is a lot of promise here and hopefully, it is implemented well and the conversations actually has sense to them (as they have had so many issues in BAP). 

Is the UI better - it looks nicer but in reality it is the a hybrid version of the BAP UI that has been around for how long....? 

I appreciate the fact that they took time to make changes to it and I hope along with these that they fixed some of the pre-existing glitches/bugs that have existed in the game for years. IF they did that as well then this is definitely good progress forward. 

Do we know if morale is fixed or player progression not being RNG anymore? If morale is still not working correctly, can we still turn it off and if we can how does that affect the rest of it?

Plus, is there way to find out what has been taken out of the game (as per the last 2 years there has been removals when stuff has been added)

Wow this looks impressive. As a person who only plays franchise it looks like i have a reason to purchase again. First time in 2 or 3 years for me.

some questions that werent covered.

1. Has the scouting mechanism improved? Or scouting in general? 
2. will scouts and other coaches grow in ratings over time?
3. has the draft changed? Like will scouts update your draft board? Will scouts make better recommendations?
4. will player contract demands be reasonable. Like a player with a decent rating but no NHL experience not ask for $8m?
5. will hiring and firing coaches be easier
6. Can u scout further in advance than upcoming draft? Example will we start receiving reports for how the 2026 draft is shaping up while in 24/25 season.
7. can we assign players to echl? I hate having a glut of players in AHL. Would rather some play in echl or send european ones back to europe for a season.

overall though it looks very impressive. Good job so far. 

Thank you for listening with the projected goalies widget! 

I am a huge fan of the additional control, but I really hate the conversation engine. If it’s around 10 times faster than it was in previous years it might not be so bad, though. Menu speed is going to be more essential than ever this year. 

Overall, I was impressed. The deep dive was actually a deep dive video, so thank you for that. I love that we can see awards from previous years, as well as game stats for other team games. I also love the addition of other contract negotiation terms. I like that we can get various team and player rewards for hitting certain goals, as this was desperately needed. I also like that we can move around draft picks to mimic the actual real life trades. They did not mention banner raising being brought back, and so that is kind of disappointing. There is more that I guess we shall wait until we start playing to find out about, but I am pleased that some of our concerns and feedback was brought in with Franchise Mode. I am still really hopeful that we will be able to host multiple expansion drafts throughout our franchise career, though with no mention of it, I do think this is a doubtful addition

 I may have missed it, but what about injuries?  Any stats on type of injury, length of injury time, overall health of players?