Hockey Ultimate Team in NHL 25

Like many others, I was excited for the new year of HUT in NHL 25, and like many others while there were a number of things that were awesome, there were other things that left me wishing I had more reason to keep playing the game.

While others in the community like NoSleeves has put it much more eloquently, my thoughts are:

The Good

• Unified XP path to let you play where you want to and earn rewards is a huge win that makes HUT so much more enjoyable
• Instant rewards similar to HUT Rush from last year on that XP Path is also a huge win, no more waiting against RNG to see if you placed high enough in Rivals or SB to get your rewards, you get them as soon as you can, which is such a game changer
• Changes to wins mattering more then shots on goal / goals above your opponent for score in Rivals / SB is also great, love that a ton too
• Gameplay (while subjective) to me has been the best gameplay in an NHL game hands down. Skill based one timers are incredible, lowered overalls to force you to play responsible hockey is great

The Bad

• The lack of content cards to chase in the XP Path or meaningful packs to chase in the XP path has limited the number of "just one more" games I'm willing to play since there is nothing on the line that I couldn't just get in EASHL or Be A Pro
• Lack of meaningful ways to get 75+ cards in the store has hyper inflated the Auction House and made completing any Team Builder or Icon sets near impossible

Despite the good gameplay HUT for the first time feels dead to me, I'm seeing the user base shrink in the first week of the game which I have never seen before, and most people are pretty hopeless that it will get better. From the community so far, some suggestions I have seen that I think might fix these issues would be:

1. For the XP Path, create 250 tiers with lower thresholds to increase through those tiers, so that the content that would have been awarded over 7 Weeks via Rivals / SB Weekly rewards: we had a similar change when opponent refreshes moved from daily to weekly for SB, i think it important to allow for the same quantity of rewards in this new format
2. A 75+ Player Pack of 10 or more players in the store: there was one during early access similiar to the 500 Point one in NHL 24 but at five times the cost. We need someway to acquire 75 to 79 players in game, all packs are either 80+ or 70 to 75, which makes doing either team builders or icon sets impossible

 Really hoping that something changes and soon, if the current rewards trends continue, then this year's HUT may be dead before Christmas. As someone who regularly plays HUT until late in the summer, I hope that won't be the case this year.