I want to know

As a newish player, that is sad to hear. I would’ve loved to play Winter Classic.

I have cracked the glass before, but not fully broken.

  Cracked glass with a puck…

Cracked glass with a check…

and dumped players in the bench a lot!

One of the biggest problems with the EA Sports NHL series is that features from older games keep getting removed, only to be brought back years later and marketed as brand-new innovations.

Hey there. This is something that has been brought up for many years. Can you show me where we advertised something as new, never before in the game that previously was? While we have returned features, I don't recall where we claimed something was brand new that we previously had in a game. Usually, when features are returned, they've been updated. Except going over the bench. That's pretty much identical, but I also don't recall us saying this had never been in previous games.

Why can’t the glass break anymore? That was possible in NHL 12 too.

We had a lot of feedback that the stoppage was annoying and it's rare that glass breaks.

Why hasn’t Winter Classic returned? We had it in NHL 12.

There's a huge amount of work that goes in to this for something a lot of people don't play. It also requires licensing so we can use the stadium. That doesn't mean it'll never happen. It's just something where there are more popular features that should receive attention first.

How is it that a game released in 2012 had features that are still missing in 2026?

Which would you like to see return?

With today’s technology, we should have Winter Classic, breakable glass, players getting checked into the benches, better crowd reactions, and a much more realistic hockey atmosphere.

I already went over glass breaking. What would you like to see change with players going over the bench?

We updated the crowd and atmosphere with 27. We'll have to wait and see what updates are in store down the road.

We’re paying full price for a new NHL game every year. We should be getting actual improvements, not recycled features that were already available over a decade ago.

We had a huge amount of requests for Connected Franchise so obviously a lot of work went in to that. Along with presentation. There also were numerous bugs and overall improvements requested by the community. The reality is, there's only so much time in a year to get as much done as we can.

Thanks for all the feedback.

While I agree with your basic premise, things do disappear and then come back as new features, glass breaking and being checked into the bench is present.