Why? Because on rebounds and passes from your goalie, he'll freeze your AI up and leave them staring at the puck. In fact, if you try to make a pass with your goalie, the puck will be invisible to your AI-controlled players for about one to two seconds. Think about this when the slot is crowded. An experienced opponent will wait like a hyena, about two skater lengths away from your goalie, and steal the puck easy as that! So try to take controll over a player in the slot on rebounds and don't skate away from the puck when the goalie let's go off it.
If you think about it, any situation where the goalie goes for a pass is a 1 on 1 battle for the puck the first 2 seconds, unless you got more human controlled players on your team, in the slot, than your opponent.
Of course, when you're attacking, Mr. Freeze can be your best friend.
"We've come to the point where we're still improving offense, defense and goalies, but we've done a really good job with those features already. What's left? That's all the intangibles that hockey has, and that's what this year is all about."
- David Littman, in this interview over at sports.espn.go.com
In short the new features are:
First person fighting. EA says they're going to make it so much fun it could stand it's ground as a fighting game on it's own.
Fighting rewards your team with energy if done at the right time (when you're down by two goals for example).
You have to go find somebody to fight. You might have to grab them, even face-wash them, to get them to drop the gloves. Though players will protect and step in to fight for your stars.
Tougness plays a bigger role. Not so tough players fatigue on a team that you're checking a lot, but you'll also see them bobble passes now and then when they hear you coming.
Penalites can be give after the whistle and you can also get into fights after it.
This is a trick that I don't use myself but I've played a couple of guys who've pulled it on me. What they do is they pull their goalie (L1 + Select), a yard before I reach the crease on the breakaway. When the goalie leaves his goal my player automatically falls if the goalie skates into him.
Personally I find this move pretty unrealistic, but as it's a risky move I'm willing to accept it.
I can't really go into detail on how to execute this move, but I guess you could also do this by controlling the goalie manually (L1 + hold X) and just skate into the approaching player. This is of course a pretty stupid move to pull repeatedly or on a opponent who shoots rather than go for dekes.
If you want to share any of your own tips or if you got a video you want to show off here at eanhl09.blogspot.com, just send a mail with the tip or video to ante.potter@gmail.com and I will post and it and give you the credit.
Here's the latest NHL 09 Top 10 from EA:
Posts
