Game is getting worse, not better.

A few things…

The player meetings in Franchise mode are dumb when the players never are willing to change whatsoever. Why do they have a choice? You’re the freaking coach, the players should not have a choice whether the coach wants them to add a secondary position to their repertoire, they should be forced to…whether it works out or not is fine, but players, especially rookies, should not have the choice to say “I don’t think that’s the best thing for my overall game”, that’s just stupid.

Also, when you have to re-sign your head coach, why is your budget so puny when a head coach demands 4x what your budget is? I know there’s a work around to just fire the entire staff and let the CPU auto-hire everyone else, but that takes the fun out of it and is frustrating. If my coach wins the Cup and his contract is up, of course I want to bring him back, but I also want to hire my own coaches throughout the organization!

And can we get different announcers for godsakes. I’m so tired of James Cybulski and Cheryl Pounder. Get announcers that people have heard of! Use AI to bring Mike Lange back to life - would be amazing to hear his catch phrases and not Cybulski’s stupidity.

FIX WHY THE CPU NEVER TAKES PENALTIES, EVER! 

Also, go back to NHL 23’s puck handling engine, it was SO much more realistic. 

NHL 26 is the last game I waste money on if you are not going to deliver a better game instead of just keeping it the same just with updated rosters.