As it is with so many annual sports series, incremental change has been the name of the game for EA’s NHL franchise for quite some time now. Rather than attempting to drastically alter its foundations, developer EA Vancouver has largely focused on making small tweaks that aim to dial up the authenticity wherever possible. It’s a strategy that continues with NHL 27, an annual entry that mostly feels the same as it has in recent years. The actual hockey remains strong, and there are a handful of small but welcome changes to be found, but the familiar feeling of nearly everything else has otherwise worn thin.
There are no new modes to speak of this year. Staples like Franchise, Build a Pro, World of Chel, and HUT serve as the main options, alongside smaller modes like Ones and Threes, plus tournaments like the World Juniors. The familiarity from past entries even extends to the menus, which look exactly the same as they did in NHL 26. Everything looks so similar, in fact, that some people might think they booted up last year’s game by mistake. There’s an argument to be made for not fixing what isn’t broken, but when a sequel doesn’t look any different right from the start up screens, it feels like a bad sign – especially for a series that often gets critiqued for its lack of differentiation.
In 2024, EA Sports made the decision to move the NHL series exclusively to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. In theory, moving away from the previous console generation should have resulted in prettier graphics, but NHL 27 continues to look stuck in the past. NHL 26 featured some weird areas where team logos would get cut off on specific screens, and while that problem has been resolved or at least lessened this year, there are a lot of other lingering graphical issues throughout.
For one thing, character models are still ugly, and that extends to both hockey personnel and fans in the stands. The crowds are filled with people that look and move like they did multiple console generations ago, and the heroes of the NHL only fare slightly better. Some players look better than others, but hockey helmets help disguise the rougher designs. The same can’t be said for veteran coaches that have spent decades in the league, who sometimes look like poorly recreated custom characters.
What’s frustrating about all this is that there are moments where NHL 27 does visually impress. The surface of the ice continues to look bright and inviting, even as it deteriorates and gets snowed up throughout the course of a game. There are also some nice little details that pop up in unexpected places – at one point while my player was sitting in the penalty box, I noticed several scratches along the surface of the glass, meant to resemble scrapes left by errant shots. For those that have spent a significant amount of time playing the real sport, these accents help things feel more realistic.
For NHL 27, EA Vancouver has also polished up the arenas, putting more effort into making them look closer to their real-world counterparts. If you’ve ever stepped foot in some of these locations, you can feel the authenticity. I’ve been to arenas like Key Bank Center, Benchmark International Arena, and Nationwide Arena, and their digital versions look and feel closer to the real thing than they have in the past. That’s thanks in part to the additional landmarks in each arena, as well as the accurate goal celebrations and Jumbotron videos. These details make NHL 27 feel like a proper celebration of the culture surrounding hockey.
To that end, there have also been big changes to the music selection. I enjoyed a lot of the tracks in NHL 26, but rather than highlighting newer artists that kind of fit with hockey’s themes, this year EA licensed popular tracks you’d be likely to hear when attending or watching games. That means the music selection can be a little older at times, but it feels way more appropriate. I’ve associated songs like Bush’s “Machinehead” and Blur’s “Song 2” with hockey since I was a kid, and these are songs that still get regular play during games. You’ll even hear hype songs that are specific to certain NHL teams, like a track the Dallas Stars commissioned for their 1999 Stanley Cup run (which was the year Brett Hull’s foot was definitely in the crease). There is even a little background on these song selections, as the menus no longer offer just the name of the song and artist, but also a team logo and a small blurb about its history with that club, or with hockey in general. These small lessons quickly proved to be one of my favorite new features.
In the decades since the NHL series began, EA Vancouver has refined its take on hockey to a point where it consistently feels fun and exciting, even if it is all familiar. The gameplay in NHL 27 is more of the same, but that core experience largely remains enjoyable as well. This formula doesn’t need to be rebuilt from the ground up, because it really does work. There’s depth and healthy learning curve, but also plenty of options to tailor the experience to match your skill level or even how much time you have to play. It gets the important elements of hockey right, from the speed and power of the players, to the immense satisfaction of scoring a big goal.
Well that was all true last year as well, the addition of playbooks is one of the biggest changes in terms of the on-ice action. The 32 real-life teams of the NHL have a lot of nuances that make them feel distinct from one another, and EA Vancouver has created specific playbooks to reflect that. When selecting a team, there’s now an option to use their assigned playbook, or to switch to one that better matches your own style. For example, if you find that the AI teammates on the Red Wings play too conservatively in the neutral zone, you can choose a playbook that encourages more aggression. Figuring out how these combinations work adds a bit more depth to the package, as well as increased strategy and opportunities for creativity.
Those that enjoy customization options like this have Be a Pro mode to lean on as well, which allows the creation of an original character that can be taken through an NHL career. I’ve often enjoyed this mode because it feels a lot closer to playing the actual sport of hockey; you’re not constantly switching between players on the ice, instead focusing on a single guy. Unfortunately, this is one of the modes most blatantly similar to NHL 26. Press conferences are pretty much unchanged, with the same groan-inducing questions meant to increase (or decrease) your brand and popularity with your fans, teammates, and the organization. Parts of this mode felt stale last year, and basically nothing has been done to breathe new life into it.
The commentary is one area where NHL 27 definitely feels stuck in the past, too. It’s never been particularly great, exacerbated by the fact that nothing feels tailored for the specific teams on the ice. The commentators often refer to checks as a “crunch,” and during one game against the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch, that exact phrase was used. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for some wordplay like “a perfect crunch from the Syracuse Crunch” – it wouldn’t be all that clever, but it would have at least made things sound distinct from all the other times I heard it. No such luck. And then there’s the fact that the exact same comments are made game after game. You can only hear about a “really exciting tilt” so many times before you contemplate shutting this banter off altogether.
It’s not just the audio commentary that’s kind of broken, either. Be a Pro mode shows news headlines between games based on your performance, and they regurgitate the same critiques ceaselessly. If your team wins a blow out but your custom character didn’t score, it’s a “rough night,” with an image of your player looking downtrodden. Even if that’s not a great night for the individual player, it doesn’t quite match what happened on the ice. Additionally, there seems to be even less variety in these headlines than there was in NHL 26.
There are lots of small elements that hurt the immersion in NHL 27. During one game in Be a Pro, I was being pressured to head to the bench late in the third period, but didn’t have a good opportunity to change up. A whistle stopped play with 1.5 seconds left in regulation, and I assumed I’d still be on the ice for this small leftover amount of time. Instead, I found my custom player sitting down for the next face off, which would never happen in a real hockey game. EA Vancouver may have put a lot of effort into making the arenas match their real-life counterparts, but the games that play out within them don’t always match that level of care. For example, home crowds will eventually turn on their team during a blowout, but it’s not immediate – that means you’ll sometimes see fans dancing and enjoying hype songs during an early 3-0 deficit like nothing is going wrong.
Hockey is one of the greatest sports in the world, and NHL 27 remains enjoyable largely due to that simple fact. The satisfaction of delivering a bone-crushing hit or snapping a wrist shot past a goaltender is just as effective as ever, and tiny tweaks to stuff like stadiums and music continue to add authenticity in small doses – but there are no illusions that anything truly substantial has changed this year. With franchises like NHL Hitz and NHL 2K long dead, there really aren’t any other options on the market. This lack of competition puts the hockey faithful in a difficult position, and doubly so since there weren’t many changes in NHL 26 compared to NHL 25 to begin with. The handful of differences are mostly welcome, nothing is worse than last year, but very little is better either. It’s a shame that NHL 27 is still stuck in the past.
Follow the story
