Teams around the NHL are holding captains’ practices this week, which means the NHL is back in business. It also means EA Sports is releasing another NHL game, and this year’s NHL 26 is promising to be a game-changer. Last year, I was impressed with NHL 25 in my review, but the community felt different about it. I thought the developers did a great job of finally making real-life hockey actions come to life. You could set up plays, straddle the blueline, and shift momentum with one big hit.
It was the first time in hockey that it resembled playing on the actual ice. Yes, there was still the occasional wrap-around goal that shouldn’t have gone in, or an AI teammate that looked lost, but it was the closest they have ever come to simple hockey I had ever seen. The community wasn’t impressed because they wanted changes to specific game modes like Be A Pro, and they wanted the GM Connected. Like with any fan base in sports, they’re always wanting more and rarely satisfied with what they have unless it measures up to their lofty expectations.
EA this year decided, with NHL 26, that they would try to give the players what they want, at least most of them. Now, they haven’t given the players back GM Connected. EA gave the players an all-new, revamped Be A Pro UI overhaul, new goalie animations, made changes to Hockey Ultimate Team, and decided to enhance the game’s presentation for NHL 26.
Goodbye, Outdoor Rink Meme
I’m retiring the old ‘Be A Pro’ outdoor rink meme because, in NHL 26, we have a whole new experience that I must admit caught me by surprise. In the past, I didn’t have any ambition to play this mode because I felt it was far too repetitive and frankly boring. The conversations between the team and the player felt pointless, and I didn’t feel there were any consequences for my actions.
In NHL 26, new motion capture animations have been added for your created pro, and updated situations have been provided. The presentation value is significantly superior to that of previous releases. You can feel the excitement as you get ready to play your first game in the World Junior Championship. Getting to play for Canada and winning, I might add, was a great start to what EA has created to be a story of being a Pro. In previous versions, it felt non-inspired and phoned in with little excitement leading up to the draft.
In NHL 26, you begin at the World Junior, and you’re whisked off to the Memorial Cup Championship to show off what type of player you are to the scouts. I want to give EA an A for effort, having Macklin Celebrini as a mentor and fully voiced by him, but his part by far didn’t feel natural and pulled me away from the fantasy a bit. Celebrini should stick to hockey; he is really good at that. Each conversation you have with your agent, Celebrini, and your coach affects your player’s future. You’re rated on your brand, how likable you are to management, and if your teammates will like you. The points are for perks your created Pro will need as you progress through Be A Pro. For each section of the story, you can skip towards your next objective, or you can advance each day and see what upgrades you can get, and you will need to use energy that you earn to make it so your Pro isn’t tired in-game. I’m not the biggest fan of the but did see something similar in Madden 26, which made me think it was coming in NHL 26.
After the Memorial Cup, you say some final words with Celebrini and your agent, which will help, along with how you played in the championship, to decide your draft placement. You can either allow for a random selection or you can influence which team takes you by answering a series of questions. For the sake of the review, I went down the conversation path to have my favourite team, the Boston Bruins, select me 7th overall. The presentation on when you get chosen was adequate in relation to what we discussed regarding the decentralized NHL draft this year.
I thought EA did a great job in NHL 26, even adding the questions after, like when most players get drafted in the first round. During each stage leading up to the draft, you had to complete objectives given to you by your agent and the team you play for, which decides who takes you in the draft and which round you go in. I’m not certain, but I’m fairly confident that the voice of the GM for the Boston Bruins in NHL 26 is former goalie and current NESN analyst Andrew Raycroft.
After you get drafted, you don’t get to jump into a regular-season NHL game just yet. You will have to play in three exhibition games for the team to decide if you will play in the remainder of the preseason or if you will be sent down to the minors to be called up later in the season. Once you make it past that, you will play the rest of the exhibition, and you get to make your NHL debut. The storyline and build-up to your first NHL game have substance and don’t feel like filler. If I had to ask for a change, it would be that you need to do a rookie lap. A lot of the presentation in NHL 26 has changed for the better, and I think a rookie lap in your first game would be a nice touch. A change to Be A Pro was one of the community’s biggest gripes about NHL 25, so I hope the community enjoys the new Be A Pro mode, as it’s fantastic. Mind you, the bar was pretty low before NHL 26.
Smooth as Ice In NHL 26
The UI has long been a sticking point for those in the NHL video game community. In the past, the menus were somewhat confusing and reminded me of the title system from Microsoft, but not in a positive way. I will say that the new UI took some getting used to, but once I got past the initial shock of it being different, I welcomed the latest edition to NHL 26. Gone are the days of having to slide over several screens to get to the game mode you want to play in CHEL or HUT. With the press of the trigger on the PS5, you get options of what game mode you want to play, and it seamlessly transitions. No lag or wait at all, and easy to read, allowing you to get into a game much faster. It’s one of those things you knew you needed but dealt with the old version because you thought it was something the developers would get to soon enough. I’m a big player of HUT, and the old menu system would add around 5 minutes to even get to a game screen, and now with the new UI, you select the mode and press one button, and you’re right in the game.
Last year, they introduced a game mode in HUT called Wild Card, which featured a different edit line screen that was easier to use. You could view all of your main lines and goalies on one screen. Great news, NHL hockey fans, because the developers at EA Sports have made the edit lines screen the new screen moving forward. You can easily select which line you want to change and have all the forward, defence, and goaltending on one screen. In the past, you would have to shuffle through the forwards line, scroll over to defence, and then scroll through all the special teams before you even got to the goalie screen.
Big Save
Year after Year, there is a promise that the goaltending will be different, and yet it always feels the same. Since NHL ’94, you have been able to score a goal by taking your player from the corner behind the net and skating out front across the crease and tucking one home. Some call it a cheesy goal, or even the NHL ’94 goal, but anyway you slice it, it can rarely be stopped. The community gets up in arms, but if you play online, everyone is doing it, and the deke goal that usually goes in as well. Some of the big players of the game online can barely score any other way, and why should they? The irony is not lost on me that the same vocal detractors from the game are the same who use a goal exploit to better themselves in the game.
This year, EA Sports introduced ICE-Q 2.0 in NHL 26, and they hope that it is a game-changer. Not only are they using the power of NHL Edge to use real-life shooting styles, skating styles, and goalie reactions to better the game, but they have added 81 goalie animations that give authentic reactions to shots.
Goalies no longer look and feel lifeless in the game and show emotion on the ice. They jump across to make diving saves and can even reach behind their back to make glove saves. To get the real experience of the upgraded goalies, you will need to play in a level above rookie, because I found that for the first time, they made rookie just that, a real rookie mode. In rookie mode, you can’t grasp the actual changes to NHL 26 about goalies, and all of the typical goals will go in except the one-timer goal they fixed later in NHL 25‘s life cycle. It will still go in from time to time, but not at the consistency it was going in NHL 25. I found that playing against pro and above goalies was considerably better than in previous NHL games. I could score on the cross-crease, but that was only after I applied a ton of pressure in the offensive zone, wore down the opposing goaltender, and ripped a snap shot top shelf. It also didn’t work every time, even with all those conditions met, which was awesome to see. It provided more of a challenge, and hopefully, it will do away with huge lopsided victories from the past.
If I could ask for one thing in a future edition of the NHL, developers, please figure out a way to put in the goalie’s actual goalie mask from the previous season. The generic masks for each goalie look so bad and take you away from the game from time to time for some of us. I know this isn’t a sticking point for most fans of the NHL series, but it would bring the game to life. Goalies put their personality in their masks, and if EA Sports wants the game to feel more like a real-life game, they need to bring in the goalie’s personality.
If it’s in the game, it’s in the Game
As I mentioned previously, NHL 26 has integrated NHL Edge with NHL 26 and is calling it ICE-Q 2.0. You will see NHL Edge all over the game, and I was a little worried you would see too much of it, like betting ads in NHL broadcasts. The majority of your replays will use NHL Edge, but not all of them. As someone who uses NHL Edge to understand the NHL game better, I welcome the technology. The integration has been seamless, and I have appreciated the face-off stats, hit stats, goalie stats, and skating speed stats to make the game feel more like a live broadcast.
The promise that players will feel more like their NHL counterparts is somewhat true. I want to test it out over a full NHL season to see if there are any changes, but I can say that players like Connor McDavid feel above and beyond faster than any other player in the game, regardless of their rating, and so they should. In previous years, elite players didn’t stand out and had the same ratings as other players in the league, and weren’t game changers. As a fan of the Boston Bruins, I have been using David Pastrnak’s quick release in the slot and noticing a considerable speed difference in his release compared to any other player on the team. That wasn’t the case in NHL 25 at all.
The replay overhaul has also been a welcome change. Gone are the canned highlights only showcasing the goals, and now we get replay trailers showing an assortment of plays altogether. We still get some in-game highlight reels that focus on one play in particular, but the replays feel more organic now and much more comparable to a real-life NHL broadcast. They have a balance of NHL Edge and non-NHL Edge replays, and so far, I have heard some commentary from last year creep in again. However, we also have some new analysis in the replays.
One of my favourite new changes to NHL 26 is the introduction of a camera view of the players before they walk out onto the ice. The NHL has been incorporating this feature into their broadcasts for years now, and in NHL 26, we also get it. Some teams have their own unique walkouts, but in NHL 26, they have added commentary to it as well for Be A Pro, which gives you the player’s mindset before jumping onto the ice. The mix of lights, sounds, and player animations gives you a little bit of hype before the players hit the ice, and so far, I haven’t skipped one of them. You won’t see these before playing in some mode like HUT, but they are prevalent in Be A Pro, Franchise, and Exhibition games or Play Now mode. Sometimes it’s the little things that can bring a game to life, and this one is a welcome change.
NHL Edge also affect a player’s X-Factor ability. In NHL 26, we’re not dealing with a couple of X-Factors like in previous years, but a multitude of X-Factor abilities, and I would say a lot of players have them. You will see an X-Factor underneath players who have the ability that can be unlocked. If you like, though, you can go into the settings menu and turn that indicator off. I found it to be helpful early into my experience with NHL 26, as it let me know which players I could unlock abilities from in-game. If a player has the Elite Edges ability, once you have made some quick cuts with that player, the icon underneath will light up, letting you know that the ability has been activated, and then prepare to break some ankles.
Hockey Ultimate Team
One of the game modes I play the most is Hockey Ultimate Team. HUT is surrounded by negativity from the community, when the fact of the matter is that not many people play it. In NHL 25, only 11 percent of players on PS5 earned the trophy for playing a game online in HUT. I personally prefer to play offline, but I still managed to get that trophy last year. The number is even lower on Xbox when only 7.2 percent of players earned the achievement. I wonder what the statistics are for offline players, but because there is no trophy or achievement associated with it, I will have to leave that stat out. In most annual sports games, the Ultimate Team mode is a cash cow, but based on these numbers, I don’t believe that to be true with the NHL franchise.
In NHL 26, there were changes to Hockey Ultimate Team with the introduction of Chase for the Cup, which replaced Squad Battles. Chase for the Cup gives the offline player an extra reason to play, as you can accumulate separate rewards for ultimately winning the championship. Squad Battles in the past were only there for grinding out objectives to accumulate points towards your XP path and gain rewards. Now with the introduction of Chase for the Cup, you have another way to get points towards your XP path, but you also get additional rewards for completing the Chase for the Cup. Chase for the Cup keeps stats for your team, and the added rewards on top of the XP Path are a welcome change. As a predominant offline player, any game modes that can reward me for playing the game offline make the enjoyment of the game that much better. A favourite mode from last year, which is Wild Card, is back, and HUT has taken a lot from Wild Card besides the edit lines screen and added it to HUT.
For the first time in HUT, they have added a salary cap to the game. No longer will players be able to create super teams because each card is assigned a dollar amount concerning the cap, and each team has a salary cap that you can’t go over. I have a feeling the community will be divided with this new feature, as some players won’t be able to use all of the cards they have accumulated now. For a couple of years now, I thought HUT was getting stale because everyone had a meta team, and no other players could create a team and win. Maybe with this new feature, it will stop powerhouse teams, but I will have to judge that by the end of the year.
NHL 26 still has the mechanic of having to trade in cards to lose them forever to get better cards, which I’m not a fan of. They also still have special set cards you need to collect to trade in for actual cards as well. I’m going to scream from the rooftops until it happens, but they need to do away with this model. I play a lot of MLB The Show, and one of my favourite things in the game is collecting the cards. You still have to trade them in, but you get to keep them and continue to use them in the game. It’s like collecting cards again as a kid, and EA needs to implement this in HUT, and I think they will get more engagement in the mode.
Verdict
NHL 25 was a significant step in the right direction for the series, as the developers changed the way we play the game. The addition of better player mechanics with ICE-Q allowed players to emulate real-life movements from NHL players in the game. At the time, I thought the community was still asking for an updated Be A Pro and GM Connected. With every yearly release, though, some in the community only move the goal posts after changes they request are made. In NHL 26, the developers took it one step further by adding analytics to the game, making the NHL superstar feel like a superstar in the game, rather than simply receiving stat boosts.
Be a Pro mode is the best it has been, and even my daughter wants to start her own Pro after watching me play. We also see added offline play for HUT, new Be A Pro features, NHL Edge integration, and new goalie animations and skill sets. I think what I’m saying is I think NHL 26 is a good game, not great, but good. It allows people who love the game of hockey to play like the pros and relive highlight moments throughout the NHL season. I believe NHL 26 will help grow the game for those who get it, but might not be the biggest hockey fans.
Everyone is going to have their own personal version of an NHL video game they want to play, but right now, I think NHL 26 is one of the best I have played in years.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
