Issues with the AI "balance"

For me the CPU never gets any pressure in my zone. I win almost all games I play even though sliders are set to make the CPU even better. Current record: 39-4-5 in Franchise mode (Difficulty: Superstar, Trades: hard, CPU Difficulty slider: 6/6)... I'm so lost on why I keep winning so easily.

I still agree with your points for puck battles, they are so weird. It's like playing the lottery. Either you get the loose puck or the opponent. No skill at all there. Animations for skaters are weird too, very stiff and physical contact feels very arcade-like. Overtuned hitting ala Michael Bay movies. But goalies are improved a lot this year (animations).

Skating isn't as good as EA tried to advertise ICE-Q 2.0 movement as. Movement in later NHL games has really been downgraded. It's not fluid, sometimes it feels like the players are running and not skating. What happened to gliding smoothly? It's gone. All of a sudden skaters just stops on a dime without animating a stop. It's kinda silly.

I also agree with you that you can feel the CPU sometimes getting weird advantage by making my players gassed all of a sudden. But it has not stopped me from beating them anyway. So I don't care about it as much, but I **bleep** would if that wasn't the case ;) Another thing I feel is that my own CPU goalie lets in very weak goals, again, this would be a larger problem if I lost all the games. So maybe EA is trying to make up for their bad CPU AI by implementing these cheap things.