The game isn’t even fun anymore!

You are not alone. While in my case, I am just brutally bad at this. 😂 I mean I cannot even win often in Rookie level at the Cup Chase in HUT. And this is embarrassing as hell. But as soon as you go online, the exploiters and glitch abusers are on to destroy any form of real hockey play. I wish EA would find some love and respect for the greatest game in sports and give us a more realistic gameplay without stuff like folks constantly abusing L2. Not to speak about the magic ability of ALL others than myself to being able to bodycheck you in a blink of an eye as soon as you get to the puck. They are hitting like the Hansons from Slapshot on steroids, while all I can achieve ist trying to hit some guy resulting in them having a 4 on 1 against my poor goalie. Nonetheless (and this might be an aspect of me seemingly being a bit masochistic) I still enjoy the game. Offline play at Rookie level does not give you a feeling of achievement, but it is at least playable and resembles at least a bit something that comes close to hockey. I feel you and I hope we all get a game like NHL 14 from EA, when EA NHL hockey was at its peak. But my hope is quite small.

There’s nothing wrong with playing on whatever level you have fun on, seriously! And if you enjoy playing at rookie level and it’s competitive enough then for sure enjoy it! I honestly felt like I was going to be stuck on rookie level forever myself, but once you get over the hump and make the jump up to higher levels you will start to see yourself winning more and more. I actually beat cup chase on super star just recently and I never ever thought I’d be able to do that especially when I was getting destroyed on all-star level for quite a while and then I just started gradually getting better! And will say, I didn’t think it made that much of a difference between a goalie at 90-92 ovr compared to 94-95 ovr or a player at 91-92 ovr and one at 95-96 ovr, and boy was I dead wrong!! I couldn’t figure out why I was getting toasted with a team at 90 ovr and a goalie at 91 ovr. And then I finally saved up enough coin to bid on Hellebuyck at 95 ovr and I was like a completely new team!! So HIGH OVR goalie is key!! And then just start working your way up with your other players, start with a couple good 90-92 ovr centers or wingers, and then get a few solid 90-92 ovr defenseman and build off that and you will notice you start playing better and better as your players get a little better! And I didn’t spend any money at all I just grinded it out and kept at it and I’m actually playing pretty well. I’m at silver 3 as of this morning on a 4 game win streak in ranked and that’s amazing for me so I’m happy with that, but I was taking a beating for quite a while in ranked and it was so frustrating playing the guys like I described in my original post. And I still do get a lot of them and I’ll usually know in the first 5 mins what I’m up against and I’ll usually just quit if it’s a glitch goal spammer. The hits I can handle for a little while anyway lol but even those start to wear me down if it’s one after another but the hits combined with the toe drag glitch goal crap sends me into a fit of rage that’s unhealthy so quitting is what’s best for me at that point lol….but keep playing and keep playing at whatever level you enjoy, there is no right or wrong for sure! Thanks for the reply! 

Thanks for the uplifting and motivation. I appreciate it. Sure I won't stop trying to soon. It's a grind, but as you wrote, sometimes I feel like not making any progress at all. But there is no quitting, as long as I have fun. Take care and good luck on the ice for you.