Reverse hit and the side backwards skating.
Let’s start with reverse hitting. This needs to be fixed. Players are starting to just hit the A button every time you get near them so if you poke check, stick lift or hit… they hit you and knock...
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EA_Aljo
Community Manager
Community ManagerIt wasn't used so much before, but people are picking up on its effectiveness now. However, it shouldn't be exploited. If you can get me a video, I'll pass it on to the team.
Wrong, people picked up on it last year.
Wrong, people picked up on it last year.
Wrong. Reverse hitting logic was specifically tuned in NHL 25 and it's much more intuitive.
the A button really make me not be able to do anything if they are able to just reverse hit me and not get a penalty when all I am doing is poke checking or stick lifting
This is the point. If you time a reverse hit incorrectly, a poke or stick lift will be effective. But if the puck carrier times reverse hit correctly, they can avoid the poke/lift/hit. This is because a poke check action will poke to where the puck is when the action is initiated, but the reverse hit button will actually move the puck's position compared to its position when in stride. Meaning; once the stride stops (pressing reverse hit) the location of the puck has changed. If a poke check or stick lift is executed while this change happens, the reverse hit allows the puck carrier to avoid the action taken by the defender.
gaining speed while facing the boards and their back towards you at top speed.
They're not gaining speed. They're just able to use vision control to negate any lateral movement animations that would impact a skater's top speed, giving the impression they are still accelerating. Combined with the penalty to backskating actions (poke check or hit) causing a massive reduction in backskating speed, if you're blindly poke checking you're going to get burned.
You cannot defend that.
You can. You need to ignore the urge to poke in favor of your defender getting to top speed while forward skating. Gain body position on the vision control abuser and simply execute a shove. It will cause them to stumble and lose the puck if executed correctly.
Please don't take this as me advocting that the game is 'perfect' or that there's no need to fix the current vision control abuse. It needs to be fixed.
However, it can be defended against if you pay close attention and practice not instructing your defender to take any action until absolutely necessary in order to match top speed with a puck carrier.
So how is there a penalty for poke checking when they can essentially skate sideways facing the boards and not skip a beat? And 99% of the time when they do that I am not poke checking as that’s how you get a penalty. So no I am not poke checking untimely or just spamming it… but it’s a little discouraging when they are able to skate in that way stop and then when you do have a chance to poke check and they are almost at a dead stop twirling the puck behind them that you do finally get a chance to poke the puck away and they hit the A button and knock your defender down and are able to score off of that.
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