I was pleasantly surprised, and a bit shocked, when I saw that I could add players like Doug Gilmour, Darryl Sittler, Wendel Clark, Joe Sakic, Eric Lindros and Curtis Joseph to my team instead of Sidney Crosby or Steven Stamkos. What also keeps Draft Champions interesting – and prevents it from being something people will only play to earn Hockey Ultimate Team credits – is that some of yesteryear’s greatest superstars are available for drafting. In fact, when you really think about it, this decision adds replay value to a mode that would have otherwise been quite light. Sure, computer controlled players will stumble from time to time, and the game’s catch-up AI will lead to some annoyingly cheap goals on your tender, but that’s nothing new and tends to happen in other sports games as well.īy choosing a theme, you limit the pool of players that can be chosen from, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. This time around, though, I’ve yet to come across anything worth mentioning, which is great.

In previous years’ outings, occasional glitches showed themselves during my review sessions.

What’s nice about all of this is that EA Sports has delivered a game that features notable improvements without any unfortunate side effects. And, as is always the case, work has been done to try to make each tender’s unique stance as close to its real-life counterpart as possible. As such, you’ll see a more varied amount of save animations, including some impressive-looking desperation stops. Not only do they show more emotion after giving up bad goals, but their ability to make reactive saves has been heightened.

This list of improvements isn’t just skater-specific, though, as the game’s goaltenders have also benefitted from being given more tools.

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