NHL 28 Early Suggestions

I 100% agree with all of this, and honestly I think EA has a much bigger opportunity here than just adding another couple of modes or polishing the gameplay every year.

Hockey’s fan base has grown a lot, especially with the exposure from the Olympics, and I really think the NHL series should start looking at how to create a game that has something for every type of hockey fan. Not everybody wants to grind HUT or play competitive online modes. Some people want realism, some want Franchise Mode, some love customization, some care about presentation, and some just want to build their own hockey world and get immersed in it.

One area I think desperately needs more attention is customization.

Create-a-Team has been around forever, but it still feels pretty limited compared to what games in other genres allow you to do now. I’d love significantly more uniform templates, striping patterns, fonts, shoulder designs, alternate jersey options, pants, gloves, socks, helmets, logos, arena branding, and so on. Even if EA doesn’t want to allow complete image uploads, the developers could create hundreds of additional generic logos, patterns, graphics, and design elements themselves so that teams don’t all feel like they were created from the same 20 templates.

Goalies especially could benefit from this.

Give us way more goalie pad options. Different pad shapes, graphic designs, color zones, blocker designs, gloves, stick tape, equipment styles, and maybe even manufacturer-inspired templates without necessarily needing every real-world brand license.

EA could create their own standard equipment designs specifically for customization. Give us 30, 40, or 50 different pad graphic templates and let us recolor every section individually.

And custom goalie masks could be absolutely insane.

Look at what modern racing games allow people to do with car liveries. Players can place shapes, decals, numbers, logos, gradients, patterns, and hundreds of individual layers. Why couldn’t something similar exist for goalie masks?

Imagine creating a completely unique mask for your goalie, then making another one for Hockey Fights Cancer night, another one for the playoffs, another for the Winter Classic, and then changing the entire design when your goalie gets traded.

That kind of feature would create entire communities by itself. People would spend hours designing goalie masks and sharing them online.

And customization shouldn’t stop at equipment.

Arena customization in Franchise Mode could become one of the coolest parts of the entire game.

Let us control the actual atmosphere.

Let me choose the primary and secondary lighting colors in the arena. Let me determine how aggressive the lighting effects are when the team enters. Let me change the colors of basic ice projections. Let me customize LED ribbon boards, scoreboard graphics, goal lighting, spotlight colors, entrance music, goal songs, goal horns, and crowd effects.

You could even have different presentation packages.

Maybe one franchise has a very traditional hockey presentation with white lighting and classic music.

Another team could have an almost concert-level entrance with moving lights, strobes, lasers, projections, smoke, and synchronized effects.

Another could have something completely unique based around the identity of the city or team.

And with how quickly technology is advancing, I think they could eventually take this even further.

Give us some kind of simplified arena editor.

Let us place props around the entrance tunnel or arena. Maybe banners, lighting fixtures, inflatable team logos, flames, smoke machines, LED structures, decorative pieces, or objects related to the team’s identity.

Imagine creating a team based around knights and having giant medieval-style props near the entrance.

Maybe your team is based around aviation and you have hangar-style scenery around the tunnel.

Maybe you have a wolf-themed team and the arena goes almost completely dark during introductions with red lighting, fog, and wolf imagery projected onto the ice.

It doesn’t need to become NHL mixed with a full CAD program. Just give players enough tools that two custom franchises can actually look and feel completely different.

Specialty nights could tie directly into all of this too.

The NHL already has games throughout the season that have different themes, awareness campaigns, military appreciation, Hockey Fights Cancer, community nights, heritage celebrations, and other special events.

Imagine having specialty games in Franchise Mode where teams wear alternate warmups, the boards or ribbon displays change, the lighting changes, the ice projections change, and maybe your goalie uses a special mask.

Then you could have the Winter Classic and Stadium Series as actual events instead of just another game on the schedule.

Outdoor stadium. Different presentation. Different crowd atmosphere. Different uniforms. Special entrance sequences. Maybe even changing weather conditions.

Those are the things that make an 82-game Franchise season feel like an actual season instead of playing essentially the same presentation 82 times.

And honestly, this is where I’m probably going to say something some people won’t agree with:

Maybe we don’t need NHL 28.

Hell, maybe we don’t even need NHL 29 immediately.

If EA came out and said, “We’re taking additional development time because we want to fundamentally rebuild and expand the NHL experience,” I wouldn’t be mad at all.

I’d rather have them take the time and create one massive step forward than keep releasing a new game every year where we get a few improvements, a couple presentation changes, some gameplay tweaks, and then start talking about the next one.

Technology is advancing incredibly quickly. Hardware is stronger. AI tools are getting better. Procedural systems are getting better. Customization tools are getting easier to build. Games are becoming more dynamic.

Take advantage of that.

Build an NHL game that doesn’t just look better but actually FEELS different.

A game where the AI plays believable hockey.

A game where Franchise Mode feels like you’re actually running an NHL organization.

A game where the presentation changes throughout the season.

A game where creative players can spend hours designing teams, goalie equipment, uniforms, arenas, and entrances.

A game where casual players can jump into an outdoor game with friends.

A game where hardcore hockey fans can obsess over realism.

A game where somebody who barely knows hockey can load it up because the atmosphere, customization, and presentation are just fun.

That’s what I think the NHL series needs.

Don’t just make NHL 28 because it’s the next number.

Take the time and make the NHL game that people look back on five or ten years later and say, “THAT was the one that completely changed the franchise.”

Because if EA actually combined improved AI, Live Franchise, outdoor games, multiple broadcast presentations, deeper customization, specialty games, custom arenas, equipment customization, unique entrances, and a genuinely modern Franchise Mode into one polished game…

I would play that nonstop.