I Played 10 Hours of NHL 26 Be A Pro So You Don’t Have To

08 Monday Sep 2025

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Hello Everybody!

Quick introduction for you. My name is @CanesStats. I’m a CHEL veteran who’s played every single NHL game that EA Sports has ever released. From Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo to my current console, the Xbox Series S.

I’ve been playing the EA Sports NHL series competitively online since 2010. Back in that game, your EASHL attributes could be earned by unlocking stats or, what everybody did instead, buying your attributes. Which everybody did, so every player was skating around in all gold gear. Back when EA learned about micro transactions. Fun times!

I was at one time, Top 10 in the World in Online Shootouts for NHL 10 and NHL 11.

(remember what EASHL lobbies looked like in NHL17?)

Around 2019 was when I started to enjoy online play again with the introduction of World of CHEL, but more importantly creating your own clubs. I found a group of friends that I played with for years. I was consistently a Top 100 EASHL skater and Goalie for the next 3-4 years until my friend group slowly dropped from the game.

(69th in the world, nice)

I played in an all Carolina Hurricanes CHEL league where we had 40-50 Hurricanes fans play weekly. From NHL 20 to NHL 25, the progression of my Xbox friends who played this game for more than 48 hours of game time has gone from 21 friends on Xbox during NHL 20, to only 5 who played NHL 25.

(NHL 20)

(NHL 25) A significant drop off in my friend group.

Most of those friends were World of CHEL players, and they stopped enjoying the online game because it’s no longer fun to play.

Introducing NHL’s focal point in NHL 26, Be A Pro. EA wanted us to know there was “no more Pricey Pond hockey,” a quip about how their Be A Pro mode had the same introducing video since NHL 20, and went untouched for 5 years in a row.

I am somebody who has not played Be A Pro since NHL 19. I even went back last month to play more of the mode. It’s not special, but it’s a mode that is there for a core audience that enjoys it.

I went in with an open mind to see if I would enjoy the new changes to the mode. The first thing I would say is, EA advertised two things this year: Be A Pro and new AI. Every other game mode pretty much went untouched. I’ll just let everybody know from the start.

I was super underwhelmed with the entire mode.

The mode starts with the basics. Choose your name, choose your country you want to represent in the World Juniors. You then head to a press conference where you answer open-ended questions that are a disguise for you to choose your position, class/role, and your X-Factor. It’s something, but it’s not really that special.

You then head to *another* press conference which sets your Challenges for your current Chapter that you’re in. You then start in the Semi-Finals of the World Juniors and play through your games similar to the old Be A Pro mode.

I played through and lost my first game, but won the Bronze Medal with Canada.

I did not meet my goals for the challenges and my draft stock plummeted because of this. The first thing I would say, I have no idea how the form score works. You’re responsible for keeping a form of 85, which is completely different from your Coach Feedback which tells you where your Overall, Offense, Defense, and Teamplay statistics are.

I finished my first two games at 80 overall in Coach Feedback, but my form after two games was a 5 out of 100.

After playing about 20 games now, I still have no idea what determines your form. Every time you change the menus in Be A Pro (which are laggy AF), the sound effects for your form will continue to update on the bottom right on the screen.

The lead up to the draft was confusing and also very abrupt. You answered questions during *another* press conference that effected your draft stock.

You would answer 7 questions and it feels like it randomly decided if your response would cause your stock to go up or down. There was no consistency on why it effected your stock. Felt like a weird mini-game where nobody told you the rules on how to play.

Immediately following these questions, it goes to a cut scene where your player gets drafted. I was drafted by the Penguins. Next cut scene is me heading to a locker room and meeting Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Kind of cool cut scene to be honest. I did enjoy the feeling of being in a locker room with stars greeting me.

Next section? Another press conference. You start to get tired of these.

This presser was for your challenges during your first chapter, where you try to make the team.

-Insert one of several very bad Macklin Celebrini voice messages you’re about to hear –

Next, you learn about how the Activities screen works. This will eventually piss you off. After playing in so many preseason games and AHL games, you learn that you’ll NEVER have stamina. The activities screen is similar to your Road to Glory from EA Sports College Football 26. Every game you play, you’ll never get enough “Energy” points to keep your stamina at a playable level.

Those effect your attributes directly. Your speed attributes get tanked so badly because of this. My 79 overall defenseman plays as a 75 overall defenseman and was 70 speed when fatigued. It’s so frustrating and very unnecessary.

I did not make the NHL roster out of camp.

I played in several games, but just did not play well during the preseason. It was during my very short stint in the AHL where I started getting a feel for my player and catching up on my player’s slow speed and offensive and defensive abilities.

I finally made it to the NHL. My first NHL game led to a cut scene. I skate on to the ice with my team. No rookie lap. No shots on goal or commentary about my first game. Just skating around and right to gameplay.

Underwhelming again. My first game was actually a memorable one. I played in overtime with Crosby and Malkin and ripped an overtime GWG in my first career game.

No grabbing the puck, no congratulations from the coach or locker room celebrating. Just an on-ice GWG celebration and that is it.

This is where my Be A Pro mode ends. I scored a goal in my first game and that was the end of my 10-hour trial. Was the mode updates cool? The fresh paint was much needed, but minus the new menus and challenges, it’s the same exact mode as Be A Pro from NHL 17.

Same exact on ice XP, same exact Coach Feedback commentary. Same exact everything.

Everything else in this rant is specifically about the new Ice-Q 2.0. It fucking sucks. It’s fucking awful.The AI has been awful for years, but EA loves using their buzzwords such as “Ice-Q 2.0” but it’s the most unrealistic AI in any NHL game I’ve ever played. It’s honestly insane how the AI regression gets worse with every single game.

It’s needed a complete overhaul for so long. I’m just going to list all my AI complaints in no specific order based on things I watched during my 10 hours of Be A Pro:

– The AI defense does not use their stick at all. They default to hits and only hits. There’s no reason players like Lane Hutson and John Klingberg default should be to go for big hits when they are not physical players.

– Piggybacking off this, the amount of pointless dekes from AI forwards in the neutral zone and entering the zone that leads to turnovers or the AI stepping up to go for big hits.

– Why is the default for fight animations after big hits so high? I had to fight Nic Deslauriers three times in one game. That’s just a waste of time.

– The AI has no idea how to complete a breakout. What I’ve noticed after defensive faceoff wins: 1.) So many times, the defending team skates backwards into the zone which leads to a bad pass up the zone or they’ll create a board battle scenario 2.) When creating a breakout the AI players skate straight in the zone. They don’t try to avoid the CPU or create space. They skate straight. They lose the puck immediately. 3.) If I’m leading the breakout, players just stop skating or slow down for no reason. There is zero situational awareness during offensive breakouts.

– The CPU has no idea what to do on 2 on 1’s. Offensively or defensively. – Why the fuck are there so many slap shots? The CPU defaults to slap shot when they have no idea what to do instead of letting a play develop.- There is no positional awareness on powerplays. There is no play development. As a defenseman, the CPU does not look at the point. There is no cycle from the AI. The AI defense continues to look for hits instead of positioning or defending on the PK.

– So many errant passes. I don’t know if this was an issue last year also, but so many muffins are getting thrown up the middle.

– So many Last Chance Puck Movement scenarios triggered for no reason.

Other small gripes about this game not related to Be A Pro or AI:

Attention to detail in franchise mode: Hurricanes jerseys in the “Prices” menu has been untouched for last 8 years, since we haven’t worn these away jerseys since 2019.

Mitch Marner is on the Maple Leafs main menu when the game starts which is crazy. Just default the rosters to the correct rosters EA.

Charles-Alexis Legault is a signed Carolina Hurricanes prospect who played in preseason for the Hurricanes and played 65 games in the AHL last season and he hasn’t been in the last two games. They don’t care about the attention to details.

Owner Goals have been untouched in Franchise Mode since NHL 17. I’ve been upgrading bathrooms for 10 years now. These goals have been out of date for a very long time.

I think I’m done writing now.

My only commentary is that this game is not a $70.00 game. The game is not worth buying the Deluxe Edition for. I hope EA knows how out of touch they are and how much they’ve alienated true hockey fans who love the game.

CHEL is Dead: A Thorough Review of NHL21

15 Tuesday Jun 2021

Posted by CanesStats in NHL

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chel, games, hockey, NHL, video games

As somebody who has played every single game in the NHL franchise, it pains me to say this, but the series is going extinct. NHL21 was hands down the worst game in the entire history of the series.

The biggest issue is that EA Sports refuses to care about the fundamental problems with this game, a game that has been trending downward for the better part of five years, and they don’t care. The reason they don’t care? Ultimate Team Microtransactions.

For this think piece, I’m going to do it in sections. We are going to breakdown the issues with this game and try to figure out what they can do to fix it.

THE GAMEPLAY

We’re gonna start with something very basic. The gameplay is not good. Some of the stuff could get a pass, but it’s been years of the same issues.l

AI / CPU

Nothing is more frustrating than playing in World of CHEL or Franchise Mode and just watching the computer players pass the puck. Watching ping pong passing plays that end up in the back of your net.

There are games in Franchise Mode that the computer will finish at 94-98% passing and finish with two goals on nine shots, no matter what difficulty you play on.

The only thing the difficulty changes is how many goals that YOU score. How difficult is it to score though? EA Sports touted the new and improved AI this season. But what they didn’t tell you is the AI defense doesn’t actually do anything.

You could always set up nice cycling plays or drop passes, but why do that when you can take any player on your roster and just skate straight. The AI splits apart and will give you a breakaway or at least an easy shot at the net.

Speed is alpha.

The AI defense doesn’t actually play ANY defense. The way EA programmed the defense is they will intercept any pass that you make, whether the computer player is even looking at you or not, and they will auto-sticklift you and steal the puck.

They never play the right man. They never cover the guy in front of the net. On odd man rushes they don’t play the body or throw a poke check or slide to block the pass. They either let you skate right by, or they steal your pass. There is no in-between. Give us an adaptive AI with the ability to make and read plays.

The AI offense is just impossible. If you play World of CHEL online, you know what it’s like to play against the CPU. Every CPU player has the abilities of Patrick Kane. They make perfect shots and passes every single time.

Have you ever made a great defensive play on the CPU, just to have them get the puck back instantly and score? Computer players have the ability to just skate right by you, auto-grab pucks, ping pong pass, and just downright embarrass you because they will never turn the puck over.

CPU picking up the puck through a player who is actively being checked and then making a perfect pass while the AI defense does nothing but stands still.

Winning a puck battle against the CPU is impossible. They already know where the puck is going to be. If you don’t believe me, watch every single icing play. The CPU is in the perfect position every time to win the icing call because they are programmed to know where the puck will end up.

Board battles in general are broken. You will never win a board battle vs a computer. You can have three human players against the boards and the computer will win the battle and just skate away with the puck. There’s also nothing worse than trying to skate by a player, already pass them, and then get suctioned to the boards because of the boardplay animation.

Last but not least, it’s always funny taking just random slapshots and watching the AI dive nowhere near the shot because of the animations. Amazing how they always know when they want to block a shot and it’s only when you take a slapshot.

Human Gameplay

The big update to NHL 21 was adding the lacrosse goal. Nobody has landed that move in a game.

Nothing frustrates me more than the fact that there are two different movesets on the controller: offense and defense. They absolutely do not flow.

Say I have the puck and hypothetically my controller dies. Nobody on my team can take the puck away from me. You can’t pokecheck me. You can’t hit me. You can’t hipcheck me off the puck. You can’t sticklift me. You just have to wait for the CPU to get the puck from me.

Playing defense is impossible. The only effective way to play defense is spam poke check and cover the cross creases. This game is so dependent on offense that there is absolutely no defense because those two options listed above are still unrewarded because you will just pokecheck it into the neutral zone just to do it all over again.

No amount of ability can stop you from taking penalties on defense. The only effective way to stop speedy forwards is pokecheck. No matter your size the animations for dekes can leave your defenseman unable to control or grab the puck, no matter what your size or their size is.

The A / X button does nothing on defense. Sticklift / the hooking/slashing button is a waste. There’s been so many times where the sticklift could be effective in front of the net but instead your player just waves at the air. Also, no amount of attributes can fix tie ups in front of the net.

Even when you do successfully sticklift a player, they usually immediately get the puck back. Good luck successfully sticklifting the CPU.

There are moments when a dangler will try to squeeze by you on the boards and you run into each other. They will still get up and grab the puck first. Just the absolute worst in-game physics engine.

How about goaltending? Why does it take so long for goalies to get off the post and why is it not fluid? How come when I come out to contest a shot that’s a mile away, my goalie will fly out of the net on a basic wrist shot just because I was moving? These are not real depicted versions of goaltending and get manipulated by players online.

For years they refuse to fix issues with the fivehole. They added the Kucherov goal but can’t fix basic issues like players being able to just shove shots through goalies, even in butterfly. Or if you’re a standup goalie, pucks will just fly through your fivehole even though you have your stick on the ice. Sometimes the animations will even have you move your stick and just let the puck by. Great stuff!

There are so many times that pucks or shots are blocked and your goalie will animate to the original shot, leaving you a mile out of position. There are no goalie animations for tipped shots. Every tipped shot animation is scripted, leaving you with absolutely no chance to make saves on tipped shots unless you’re lucky and in a good position.

Queued up animations:

• When you call for a pass, but you’re already being passed the puck, the game forces you to still pass the puck. Usually you’ll ice the puck when this happens
• When you try to check somebody off the puck, they lose possession of the puck and you auto-grab the puck, and you’re now forced to shoot the puck because shooting and checking use the same button
• When you try to manual one-time a shot, it gets deflected away, but you have to finish the animation, so the CPU player behind the net auto-shoots the puck when they grab it
• When you call for a pass from the CPU, but they feel the need to pointlessly pass it off the boards instead of making the easy and direct pass, or when you try to manual saucer a pass and lose the puck and trip the player because saucer and poke uses the same buttons

Attributes

Plain and simple, attributes do not matter. They don’t matter in Online Versus. They don’t matter in franchise mode. They don’t matter in World of CHEL. They don’t matter in Shootouts. They don’t mean anything.

You can go into an online shootout game with Rögle BK who play in the SHL and easily beat Team Canada. Your players will shoot just as effectively as the best players in the world and your goalie will perform just as well, if not better.

Playing in any game mode online, top faceoff players will still lose to lower level players because faceoffs are essentially a mini-game. The attributes do not matter at all, rendering them pointless.

99 overall goalies will play just as well as 69 overall goalies. If you’ve ever played HUT, you’ve seen this. Nobody spends money on goalies in HUT because they absolutely do not matter. None of the goaltender attributes matter.

You have stats like fighting skill and discipline and they don’t matter in franchise mode simulation or in the actual game. Playing simulations where Jaccob Slavin leads the Hurricanes in PIM while Dougie Hamilton finishes with 14 PIM on the season is super hysterical, especially if you know that no defenseman takes more minor penalties than Hamilton and Slavin is up for the Lady Byng.

Playing in World of CHEL, the only attribute that really matters is speed. It beats everything on this game. Playing as a playmaker most of NHL20 and NHL21, and using 95 passing when you realize you can be a power forward with 79 passing and it’s just as effective. Because passing is another attribute in the long list of attributes that do not matter.

Playing as a defenseman with 90+ slapshot accuracy and one-time wonder trait on and missing the net, but doing the same thing with a dangler at 70 slapshot accuracy and scoring.

Speaking of World of Chel…

World of CHEL

Let’s start with the Club Finals. They are broken. As somebody who is playing in the high elite level on Xbox, there’s nothing worse than playing a team, beating a team, matching up with them again and watching them leave, over and over and over and over again.

The matchmaking for Club Finals needs fixed. 4:00-6:00 wait times (they’re actually much longer). Why do we need to play these? Why are the playoffs not optional? Why are the Club Finals two weeks long? So many issues there alone.

Focusing back on matchmaking, there’s nothing worse than being forced to sit in CHEL lobby for over 20 minutes. Sometimes up to an hour just to find a game. Having to search on relaxed, to keep matching up with 2’s, forcing you to play against computer players. Playing the same teams over and over.

Cross-platform. Get with the times.

There’s gotta be more in regards to adjusting how your team plays on the ice. We should be able to customize how the AI plays for our team. If I have a CPU defenseman, let me choose his attributes and play style that fits my team’s needs and style.

Our goalie had a bad first period. Let us switch positions at the end of periods so we can have a chance at winning. Let us change our loadouts mid-game. FIFA allows adjustments, changes, and customizing on the fly. Let us do more.

Let our friends in our club join mid-game. Have them sitting on our bench when they load-in and the ability to join in at the first stoppage.

On the opposite spectrum, get rid of trolling. It’s not fun hopping into drop-ins or playing an actual game against teams who are intentionally taking 10 penalties a period. End the game for clubs who are doing this or give individual players game misconducts to remove them from the game so it can still be completed. Add a ban option. Do anything. This has been an issue for 5+ years now.

Let. Us. Open. All. The. Bags. At. Once.

(I currently have 116 unopened bags, like a savage)

My bags stay unopened because I’m not wasting all of my time opening bags. In fact, let me decide what I want. The bags are cool, but let me decide what celebrations I want. Let me earn points and buy the equipment I want to use or wear.

Add more to EASHL practices. Why can I play goalie, but when I choose defenseman in practice I can only play offense? Why can we not run drills or practice breakouts, set plays against CPU, etc…

More customizing. Arenas are so bland. There is no difference in playing in an elite club vs playing in a rookie club to the average eye. In fact the only difference is the jerseys and you don’t have to keep watching the h20 vending machine on repeat.

Why do we not have the ability to call timeouts in-game? Why do we have to pause the game to use a timeout and why should I be forced to lose my timeout if somebody on my team had to pause the game in the first period?

How come stamina isn’t regenerated during stoppages? How come if I get hurt at the end of a period, that carries over into the next period? Why are there still floating heads on the ice during penalty kills? Why does the puck randomly just stop in the corners on dumps? Why does the screen turn black during penalty shots? I could honestly ask a billion more questions.

EA Report Players

In August of 2020, EA Sports announced that they would be creating the ability to report offensive content.

In December my club name of “Bunch of Jerks” was banned.

Meanwhile, a team I played and who I’ve reported several times is on the list of top clubs for the month. And they just keep changing their name with no punishment from EA

This is an issue I’m mostly nitpicking, but it needs work. There’s no reason this team and it’s players who are repeat offenders should not have been banned by now. EA is taking a step in the right direction, but there is more to be done.

Connected GM

This will be short and sweet. This has been asked for by the fans for years. Give the fans what they want, and let them play GM Connected. It’s not hard to do.

Be a Pro Career

This one is not really my strong suit, but this one left fans wanting more. Improve on last year.

Roster Sharing

Add it. The community is better at this than your team. Let us fix the players and their attributes.

Franchise Mode

Where do we even start on this one? How about the fact that franchise mode wasn’t even playable at the opening release? They had to release several patches just to make it playable and it’s barely that.

This season’s big addition was the trade deadline game. I do somewhat enjoy this idea, because much like the mode, I’m sitting on my phone for ten minutes waiting for the mode to end and hoping somebody offers me a trade that’s halfway decent.

Make free agency and the deadline actually mean something. The biggest gripe I have about free agency is that I can literally sign any player I want at any given time. That’s not how free agency works in real life.

Give me a challenge. Does the player have a Stanley Cup? Am I currently a contender? Is he from where I play? Can I promise the player ice time? Is he familiar with my coaching staff? Is another team offering him more money? Nope. I just pay a lot of money and he automatically signs with my team every single time.

Players in your system automatically progress, but there’s no rhyme or reason why they progress the way they do. Why do we not have the ability to train our players? Yeah it’s cool that Tim Stützle is growing into a center, why can’t I apply a focus to him winning faceoffs? Why can’t I have Milan Lucic training in the powerplay (lol)? Give me the abilities.

The menu for franchise mode has been the same since NHL 16. That’s exactly how much effort they’ve put into franchise mode.

I went into a rant earlier this season about how the Hurricanes had several prospects who had literally been untouched in the EA series for over three full years!

(3 prospects who’s stats didn’t change from NHL19 -> NHL21

Going into the season, the attention to detail was so minimal by EA that they forgot to adjust the top picks in the NHL draft, causing potential and ratings for prospects to be all over the place.

The biggest gripe on franchise mode is that they literally didn’t do anything to update this mode. It was literally a copy and paste from NHL20 and that’s not an exaggeration.

The attention to detail in franchise mode is embarrassing to be honest. They had to fix the trade engine because of the extremely high values on some players.

NBA2K does a great job at creating a sandbox in regards to customization and endless amounts of possibilities while in the franchise mode.

This mode is what NHL was originally built on and it’s practically a shell of what it used to be. Where has the creativity from EA gone?

International Teams / World Cup of Hockey

This game has not updated the international teams in this game since NHL 2005, when this game was on the Gamecube and Playstation 2.

You have a franchise mode with players from international countries. Do something with it.

Have the IIHF World Championships and have them feature players eliminated from playoff contention and future prospects. Make a story out of it. Have World Juniors tournaments and have your team scout those events.

Make an international player pool similar to FIFA so international teams can be customized and modes like World Cup and Franchise Mode can intertwine at any given time.

Countries like Slovenia and South Korea are unrepresented even though they were in the most recent Olympic games, but countries like Japan, Poland, and Ukraine are still featured in this game by default, even though they are well below Slovenia and Korea in the IIHF World Rankings.

Last but not least, HUT

The last three years, EA has shown their true colors in regards to the only thing they care about on this game: Ultimate Team.

Preorder this game and get your Ultimate Team boosted early. As you can see, it’s the only thing featured in the last three preorders of the game.

If you follow the EA NHL Twitter page, the only thing featured on the Twitter page is the new HUT updates. They don’t feature anything else on their page except the newest cards being released. The only way to get these players? Pay EA Sports money.

There aren’t challenges to grind for certain players. The only way to compete against top clubs is to pay money for top cards or grind enough games to buy the cards.

It’s not a good model, but EA Sports doesn’t even try to hide it. They use the same model in FIFA and Madden. In every single game mode, HUT is shoved down your throat.

Even in World of CHEL, you get rewarded with bags. In the bags, you get cards that can only be used in HUT.

In Conclusion

I am in a group on Facebook that features over 16,000 people who play CHEL and I asked what they wanted to fix about this game. I received well over 100 comments on this game and not one comment was about fixing HUT. Nobody cares about fixing this game mode except EA. There are bigger fundamental issues that need to be fixed.

EA wants to get every cent possible from the consumer. Every single pack you buy with your money goes into EA’s greedy pockets. And they don’t care about fixing the actual problems, an incompetent game.

EA Sports and the NHL just recently announced a multi-year extension on “simulation based hockey games”

When you chime back at EA Sports in regards to this you get the same answers.

The sad truth is EA Sports will always have a monopoly on simulation based sports games. You and me boycotting this game will not solve the major issues at hand.

Nobody is buying the rights to this game because of the EA Monopoly.

EA Sports is a cog in the wheel, the wheel’s gonna keep on turning as long they still make all their revenue in Ultimate Team.

The question now is what can we do to make EA Sports give us a playable game? I honestly don’t have that answer, but I wish I did.

Maybe a start would be fixing cross creases.

Canes Stats

~ Just Canes featuring Stats

I Played 10 Hours of NHL 26 Be A Pro So You Don’t Have To

CHEL is Dead: A Thorough Review of NHL21