Poke Checks

OFFENDED_DMAN wrote:

It's just convenient to portrait criticims as bad players with short temper. I can tell you, from organised league, lots of good players don't like the state of the game.

If that’s the case, then why are they participating in an organized league built entirely around this game? Why are they scheduling their evenings around it, buying consoles specifically to play it, and purchasing the title year after year?

The more honest answer is that they do enjoy the game right up until they’re matched against a team that outplays them. That’s when the complaints start. That’s when frustration turns into narrative. You don’t hear these criticisms when they’re stringing together highlight-reel plays (although some among us have done this), walking defenders, and burying one timers after clean puck movement. The outrage often only surfaces when the game flips and they’re on the wrong side of a matchup.

Suddenly it’s “teams can score at will,” “poke checks don’t work,” or “the game is broken.” When asked to back those claims with video, the response is usually deflection, “if you play enough, you’d know.” And when video does get posted, it often just illustrates a skill gap that’s being ignored. Left unaddressed, that gap doesn’t disappear; it just fuels more resentment toward the game itself.

There are legitimate issues surrounding poke checks and stick lifts (although I still think there's a mechanical change to both that has still gone unnoticed) and not all complaints are from bad players with a short temper but as we've seen by the videos posted on these forums there are often very fundamental misunderstandings on how some mechanics work and when someone tries to point that out, the reaction is just anger that someone would have the gall to question others' hockey IQ and real-world hockey experience. 

OFFENDED_DMAN wrote:

You explain in great details how the game mechanic operate but it's irrelevant since the model is incomplete. It's impossible to program all the nuances of a real life poke check through a gamepad. Sometime you should spear the puck, othertime you could reel it back, instead we are stuck with a limpy stick extension that barely dislodge it 2 inches away, no wonder the game decide the carrier is in better position to grab it back... 

The question isn’t whether the game perfectly reproduces real life biomechanics through a gamepad. It can’t, and no one seriously expects it to. The question is whether the system is coherent, learnable, and expressive within its constraints. I believe it is.

What you’re describing as a “limpy stick extension” is usually the result of how and when the mechanic is being used, not evidence that the mechanic itself is broken. Poke checks aren’t a single binary action with a guaranteed outcome, they’re contextual. Angle, gap control, skating direction, carrier speed, handedness, timing, and recovery state all matter. If you’re reaching while flat-footed, overextended, or from a disadvantaged lane, the game is correctly resolving that as a low percentage play. That’s not the engine “deciding” for the puck carrier out of favoritism; that’s risk being punished.

The irony is that the same people arguing for more “realism” often want outcomes without accepting the responsibility that realism demands. In real hockey, a bad poke puts you out of position and hands the attacker an advantage. The game models that tradeoff. It just doesn’t bail you out when you choose poorly.

At some point, this stops being about theoretical limitations of a model and starts being about mastery. Not everyone is able or willing to extract value from all of the mechanics working together: skating, spacing, defensive posture, and restraint. Calling the system incomplete is an easy way to avoid confronting that gap. Although - there is always room for improvement with added animations, physics calculations, etc. 

OFFENDED_DMAN wrote:

It's a balancing act, too much of it and you'll have a stale game too, plus it goes against high level hockey play that by definition beats the odds. In the current state, it stiffen creativity on the defensive side imo, making poke check too predictable.

I agree that it is a balancing act, but “highlevel hockey beats the odds” doesn’t mean every low percentage defensive action should be rewarded in the name of creativity. At high levels, what actually beats the odds is decision quality, not randomness. The game is trying to model that distinction.

Poke checking becoming “predictable” isn’t inherently a flaw; it’s a signal that it’s no longer meant to be a default answer. At higher levels of play, predictability is exactly what gets punished. The game is pushing defenders toward layered solutions like:

angle control

body positioning

stick lift timing (nobody has mentioned on these forums yet this year that you can interfere with a shot by using stick lift, which tells me there's still fundamental misunderstandings of the changes made to the mechanic)

gap management

 and delayed pressure rather than repetitive reach ins.

That’s not stifling creativity, it’s forcing intentionality.

If poke checks were more freely effective, you wouldn’t get creativity. You’d get defensive spam. We’ve seen that era already, and it produced a far more stagnant game where offense was throttled by low-risk defensive inputs. The current model accepts that elite offense will sometimes win cleanly, just as it does in real hockey, but it also rewards defenders who understand when not to poke.

High level play isn’t about beating the odds by brute forcing mechanics, it’s about stacking advantages and minimizing risk. When poke checks feel “predictable,” it’s often because the attacker has already won the battle earlier in the sequence—through speed, spacing, or deception and the poke is arriving late. That’s not the system suppressing defensive creativity; that’s the system recognizing who earned the upper hand.