The NHL franchise might not get the same attention as EA Sports FC and the newly returned College Football, but Chel fans are dedicated and deserve as much love as the rest of them. While the series has made significant improvements in recent years, here are some things NHL 26 can do to make it a truly great NHL game.
Fix The Commentary in NHL 26
NHL has some of the best in-game commentary in sports, but sadly, the game franchise has lacked the same excitement fans get on TV every week. Commentary in NHL 25 is more focused on the arcade feel of the game and does not quite live up to the realism of the graphics and player movements.
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Improving commentary and utilizing some of the best talents in the sport to give a more authentic experience would dramatically improve the game for diehard fans of the sport. Things like more accurate calls and more player-specific comments that don’t just revolve around their X-factor abilities would be helpful. It would even be great to have a more enhanced pre-game and intermission commentary, something that tries to more accurately mimic the real-life experience of watching a game on TV.
Better New Player Experience
Onboarding new players is always challenging since experienced players don’t want to get thrown into a tutorial immediately. There is an option to switch to more straightforward controls, but it would be nice if players had a better way to really learn how and why the different mechanics and controls work. Scoring, specifically, is a very challenging thing to do if you don’t understand the nuances of hockey.
Learning how to read player movements and what type of shot to select is an ongoing process, but the game does not do a great job of helping new players understand how that works. It just shows the controls and throws players onto the ice to figure it out as they go. The increased realism in the franchise has made the game harder to play, so it needs a better way to really teach players the depths of how to play and be the best on the ice.
NHL 26 Needs to Showcase The Legends of the Game
The NHL is a historic league with decades of legendary players and teams. NHL 26 could take something out of NBA 2k’s book and highlight eras teams. I would love to play as the Penguins from the early 90s and re-live the glory days of Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. Playing as an iconic team against the best of the current era would be a nice little addition that increases the options for players to experience.
Improved CPU Players
While the on-ice experience for human-controlled players is great, the computer AI is pretty rough. Defenders will make silly mistakes, screwing over players in the middle of the game’s most intense moments. It can also be challenging to read player movements and know what your teammates are going to do next.
There are times when a player might struggle to get back onside in a way that really doesn’t feel like something a real player would do. The split-second decision-making that makes hockey so special is sometimes missing, leaving players stranded waiting for their AI teammates to do something useful. Some work is needed to make the computer-controlled players feel as real as the human ones, something that really takes away from the overall enjoyment of the game.
A Deeper Be a Pro Mode would make NHL 26 Shine
Franchise mode has improved in recent years, but the Be a Pro mode has largely been untouched. Plenty of depth could be added in NHL 26 to make the player experience closer to the actual NHL journey. Spending time in the lower tiers of hockey, working your way up in a way similar to MLB The Show‘s Road to the Show.
There are some “story” elements, but they are the same scenarios year after year and are incredibly stale. Freshening up the player experience by making the road from draft prospect to NHL star more challenging and personal is a much-needed change. Right now, the mode is hardly worth checking out since it hasn’t changed much over the years, but some small tweaks to make it more in line with the single-player experience in other EA Sports franchises would fix that.
NHL 25 is a perfectly fine hockey game, but some of these tweaks in NHL 26 could make it a truly special game. What else would you like to see in the hit hockey franchise? Let us know!
NHL 25 is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
