A to Z Challenge: NHL (EA Sports)

 My favorite sports game series has been EA's NHL series.  I first started playing it with NHL 95 for the SNES.  While some people might like other years better, I had a lot of fun with it.  It might not have been the first one where you could create a player, but it did have that feature so you could make your own guy or guys to play alongside the real players.

(In the picture above I took 5 Hartford players against Steve Yzerman and Bob Essensa in practice.  It didn't take long for future Red Wing player/exec Pat Verbeek to score.  About a year later, Hartford would move to Carolina to become the Hurricanes.)

Of course I played the Red Wings a lot, who back then had a really good team.  Though playing it a couple of years later, I'd usually trade Keith Primeau and Paul Coffey for Brendan Shanahan as the Wings did in real life.  You could assemble most of the 97-98 teams if you traded with some other teams for Shanahan, Tomas Sandstrom, Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby, Doug Brown, Mike Vernon, and maybe some others.  You would probably have to make a few others like Tomas Holmstrom, Mathieu Dandenault, or Aaron Ward.

Anyway, besides the regular game, I had a lot of fun with the practice feature.  That let you choose from 0-5 members of two different teams.  So you could play 5-on-5 or 5-4 or even 5 against just the goalie.  You could practice offense or if you let the computer have 5 guys and you only have 1 or just the goalie, you can practice your defense.  Unfortunately that wasn't a feature EA continued.

The next ones I bought were for the PC, starting with NHL 2000.  The graphics were better and the roster building was a lot better too.  You could sign free agents, make your own players, and of course do trades.  I think I had 2001 too, which might have been a little better.  But 2002-2003 weren't that good.

NHL 2004 was one I played a ton on the PS2.  The cool thing with that was not only could you create players; you could create whole teams!  You could make up a city and a logo and then create your own roster with an expansion draft.  But I usually created my own roster--the Mutts!  I made a whole team based on some old stuffed animals.  Spot Mutt II was the star and captain with his son Spot III as the sniper on the top line and his son Spot IV as "the Hammer" or the bigger guy who fought and did the dirty work.  Spot V and Spot VI then were the defensive pair with one being more offense-minded and one more defense-minded.

The second unit featured raccoons with Ricky Raccoon at center and Vern and Zeke as the wingers.  And then a couple more as the defense.  The third unit used St. Bernards with Bernard St. Bernard at center and a bunch of B-names on offense and "Dave" Beethoven on defense.  This line was intended to be the "checking line" or the line that would hit people and play defense more than score.  (Because St. Bernards are big and can be mean.  Get it?)  The final unit was just some randos like Artful Dodger, Cooler Mutt, and Jeremiah Mutt.  The goalies I made one of each animal though they were all female:  Spot's wife Marshy Mutt, Ricky's mother Laura Raccoon, and Bernard's wife Bernice St. Bernard.  Which one was in goal would depend on who had the hot hand--or paw.

Besides making my own team, I'd grease the settings a little to play a faster game.  None of that "trap" bullshit for us!  When you won the Stanley Cup, there was a cool montage at the end that would show your guys and give stats.  And then in "Dynasty Mode" you could go on to the next year!  Your team would carry over and have to do it again.  As players got older, their stats would decline and after a few years some of the more veteran ones would have to be dumped for new players.

Unfortunately, the next year EA mailed it in, probably because of the lockout.  NHL 2005 was shit that I never actually bought, just rented.  I don't think that one even let you create players!  WTF?!  I tried NHL2K5 but the minigames were more fun than the real game.

The next one I bought was NHL 2007 for the PS2.  It was a lot more like NHL 2004, with most of the same features.  And it added in a bunch of European league teams from Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, and Russia.  The neat thing about that was sometimes a player might go to Russia for a year or so and then come back, so you might find him on the roster of a team in that league and be able to put him where he was.  Or the team in Sweden or Switzerland might have a prospect an NHL team calls up so you could trade him to that team.  The first couple of years it was a good way to help keep rosters somewhat current.

Again you could create a team and I used basically the same team.  I think the difference was this time with a salary cap you had to be more careful about the players you created so they wouldn't be too expensive.  The montage at the end wasn't as good but overall the game play was largely the same.

I apparently got NHL 2009 as well so some of my memories from 2007 might be for that game.  Or I might not have played it much.  I don't really remember.

Since the PS2 stopped having games made for it a year or two later, I never got any more NHL games.  I could get them for the PC but I don't really care.  I haven't watched a lot of hockey since the Red Wings stopped being good so I don't even know most of the players anymore and a lot of the ones I do know are getting old.  I mean Sid "the Kid" Crosby is like 35 now.  A lot of the star players from the 80s-2000s are coaches or executives now.  Such is the way of things.