@EA_Aljo
Thank you for all the replies and all the advice. Every recommendation you have made I have tried to incorporate into my game. Regardless of any changes though, nearly every game I play feels like the ice is tilted.
I will say this, and I can't stress this enough. There is 100% something in this game that gives a performance boost to a team that is significantly worse. When I start a game by about the 10 minute mark if I notice that I am significantly better than my opponent and we haven't even played a minute my zone I know I am going to lose.
When these games happen (4/5 games) I will outplay TOA 15 min - 4 min and lose by multiple goals. If I have a 10 foot head start on a puck that slides down the ice, full out sprinting I will lose the race every time by 5 feet. If I have a 20 foot headstart on a breakaway his defenders will catch up and somehow without taking a penalty simply steal the puck from behind and start down the ice. My players cannot be lower energy the entire game but they will always skate slower in these scenarios. It's also impossible to set up odd man rushes when my players skate so slow, and when I finally do my skater on the other wings skates away. All my opponent has to do is enter the zone and fire a wrister at the net and it will blow past my goalie. How do I defend that? How do I play better? 25% of passes will for some reason go directly to my opponent's stick and not my player I aimed at about 30° difference in pass angle. This is extremely frusterating. My last game I played I made a pass diagonally across the O zone and it passed directly by 3 of my skaters and hit the boards, and when I used my last skater to go grab it, they skated over the puck, my opponent grabbed it and launched an immediate stretch pass to a guy that was covered but it went through him and once he hit the blue line yet another wrist shot goal.
Perfect cross seam plays and his goalie jumps and makes the save, perfect shot opportunities that my players will miss 9/10 times. One timer set ups and my player turns as I pass to them and they fire it weakly on a backhand that doesn't even make it to the net. This last second turn as they are about to or as they get the puck cause so many more problems, as they turn into opponent AI and redirect pucks into your own net. Also my AI seem to skate into each other and bunch up leaving large sections of the ice open. Or they will skate into me, effectively slowing me down allowing the opponent to set up and destroying the play.
Check them into the boards full force and they slither through with the puck. Pass to an open player? Puck magnetizes off my stick and onto my opponents. Skating up the ice and my player randomly looses the puck without cause. Any press of RB is a penalty, regardless of if the poke check was even close to their feet, and I have videos of poke checking 3 feet out and they fall over...
Meanwhile the puck is attached to their stick with a string. If I poke it lose it makes a tick sound and they get it back, or it perfectly passing to their other player. They can skate through multiple of my players with the skaters passing right through their stick but they don't lose it. Or if I check them they will instantly regain it.
I also have video of cross seam passes that make it to my second skater and then it suddenly floats off and magnetizes to my opponent's defender.
It absolutely wrecks the game when you outplay and outskill your opponent in every way but you lose. Time and time again I have 10 more mins of attack, 15-20 more shots, 10x their grade A scoring chances but my goalie kicks pucks into his own net and randomly gets halted half way through sliding to the other post and my AI are a div 3 peewee team.
On a separate note, trips resulting from poke checks where the hand contacts the waist should be removed. It makes no sense that a glove grazing a player's waist sweeps out their feet. And especially when you are in front of them when you're chasing them back.
I love hockey and I loved playing the NHL games but every game I play it pushes me farther from wanting to give the next game in the series a try. I want to contribute to the next game by providing these issues and the video evidence so it can be fixed but it honestly wrecks this game for me. I'm at the rate of recording 2-3 obvious game changing errors a game, but the majority of the problems like loosing a long lead on a puck race or passing to the wrong person can't simply be recorded as proof of a problem.
Also there is definitely a problem with AI penalties in offline play. It is outrageous how my AI can take 5+ penalties a game when I am the one playing the puck carrier. ESPECIALLY when you're already on the pk to put you on a 5 on 3. Online play seems to be much better for some reason.
