Defense is a joke

People are rightfully angry, most of them take it out on the wrong people and yell at others who disagree with them in the community instead. Doesn’t change the fact that the devs make some objectively bad gameplay decisions and then also refuse to have any form of open dialogue with the players.

I'm finding poke checks to be less reliable in NHL 26 compared to previous years.  It's not "broken", but there are many more instances where what should be a simple, quick poke on an exposed puck ends up doing nothing.

A couple of quick examples.  In both cases the defender is a teammate of mine running a TWD with 94 Defensive Awareness and Stick Checking.  No applicable X-Factors, but with those attributes I don't see why they'd be needed for these plays.

This is a direct poke on an unprotected puck and his stick just bounces off it like he's poking a brick wall.  If I had to guess the offensive player pulling the puck back into the defender's stick as he's getting ready to shoot somehow nullifies the poke.  But IMO a poke directly on the puck should do something here.

This next one is much more common in NHL 26 than in previous years.  Here the offensive player attempts a loose puck deke and the defender makes what I feel is a well-timed and aimed poke at the loose puck.   The poke is going directly at the exposed puck but at the last moment makes a move to circle around the puck instead of just following straight through.  This is just a quick tap of the poke button not DSS so it's out of the defender's control.  There's something off about poking against loose puck dekes this year.  I'm not saying it's the best defensive choice every time, but here I feel like there's no reason for the defender to miss this poke.

I don't hate the defense in this game but there are certainly things that should be addressed/ improved. The DSS is far more reliable than a poke. I do think a poking should be more effective. Interceptions are in a good place. Hitting is actually too good.. mostly due to xfactors just not being remotely balanced and them making this more arcade like.

I'd say most of the defensive issues stem more from the tools the forwards are getting rather than the lack of defense. The L2 stuff, the speed, the reverse hits, the x-factors, the puck protect, button press passes, broken builds like the new specter, etc. The expectation of what a defender must do/ overcome far outweighs that of a forward. The x-factors alone just do such WILD things in the game. They are not doing what they were initially designed to do. 

In the two videos above I believe it's a good example of whatvI'm saying. Offensive animations taking precedence over defensive one's. Someone dekes and now they sometimes become invincible, the puck can't be stopped, defensive players will often stumble now even if YOU the player expected a deke.. because of a new xfactor. We often see similar things when poking and the guy who got poked keeps his same speed while defender is slowed down.. offensive player regains possession before the defensive player is able to regain his footing. It's just a lot of little advantages that the offense has over the defense and it's incredibly hard to overcome all of it. They make defense sorta tough and I do enjoy that, I just think offense needs to be held to that same expectation. Make everything harder for the offense again. Just removing some of the wild skating animations that the forwards get would go a LONG way. 

Defense is horrible in this game, just how EA likes it. 

Thank you for the clips. Absolutely appreciate it. I agree in those situations the poke should have been more affective. I've always said, poking could use a bit of a boost. In my personal play though, the high majority of them are contacting and separating the player from the puck. 

GingerMessiah27 wrote:

Doesn’t change the fact that the devs make some objectively bad gameplay decisions and then also refuse to have any form of open dialogue with the players.

You're in a thread where an EA employee is literally engaging with everyone.

Defense has its issues but 'horrible' is a more apt description of how some people play the position.

Defense is horrible in this game, just how EA likes it. 

This is just not true. I'm not going to say defense is perfect, but us liking horrible defense is 100% false.

You do understand, right? The NHL game is built on a player vs. computer, not player vs. player basis. This is not a simulation, so it is not authentic player vs. player gameplay. If you don't understand how the game is built, you can't understand how it works. In that case, you can easily think that it is working incorrectly. 

I don't like this either, but this is the NHL series. It wasn't designed for online play. I've been hoping for years that they would make their own version for online so these problems wouldn't exist.

This "poke3" is almost against the laws of physics, but that "poke1" small change is similar to what I had when I was drifting the controller.
Both of these look really stupid in slow motion and I will say that this same abnormal movement of the stick is also visible in the be a pro game mode. I have a new controller so there is definitely no drifting.