My Gripe

I'm Canadian, so by default I'm a hockey fan, a huge one at that. The Edmonton Oilers rule, there will never ever be a team as great as the mid 80s Oilers, and there never has been. No one played faster, smarter, and more exciting hockey in the world. What you new fans watch now in the arenas and on TV, that's called … something I better not write in public. The Calgary Flamed don't belong in the IHL, nevermind the NHL. I can't stand to watch regular season games anymore, but I'll follow the statistics and I almost failed an exam because I wanted to catch Oilers vs. Dallas Game 4, 1998/1999 NHL Playoffs. All hockey related whining aside (including the politics, the gameplay, the uh… refereeing, if you want to call it that, etc. etc.), the biggest problem with hockey is the complete and utter lack of a good simulation of it. You can get arcadish play anywhere - EA's NHL series is unbeatable for the fun factor, but simulation? Look elsewhere, bud.

Doesnt Ed Belfour look happy

Eddie the Eagle comes up huge!

See, there are good Basketball, Football (American rules), Football (World style - AKA soccer), and baseball sims. You get relatively accurate scores, season stats that don't make you go "huh?!" and a challenge from the computer without it being obvious that it cheats.

Hockey, on the other hand, has such *cough*great*cough* simulations as EA Sports' NHL '99. Woo. Without giving you a full review of that, let me explain what happens in a real hockey game, what should happen to make it more fun on computer, and what happens on NHL '99.

Penalty's over!

Stuffit, beeyotch

The Real Game:

3 periods, 20 minutes long. Teams, on average, get about 25-30 shots on goal, with about 4-5 total goals per game (shot on goal: a player shoots and the goalie has to stop it - so this doesn't count misses and blocked shots by defensemen/forwards, but does count goals.) There is tons of passing, quite a few interceptions and misses, loads of checks which slow players down and make them lose puck control (without knocking them through the glass or spreading them on the ice), and (Gary Bettman, please read this) … loads of BS like holding players, dragging on their jerseys, playing this stinkass system called the trap which slows gameplay to a crawl that could put Too Much Coffee Man to sleep in the middle of a caffeine high!