After a few weeks of playing in the EASHL, I must say that I am very happy with EA.

It seems like most of the cheesy goals from NHL 09 and NHL 10 have been fixed. No more is my team being pummeled by wraparounds and curve shots. Now, poor souls that go for toe drags are ending up on their butts. The loop glitch that was rampant in the spring months has not been noticeable in NHL 11. Self boarding while carrying the puck into the offensive zone (my personal cause of annoyance in NHL 10) is not beneficial anymore since checking someone who is boarding himself results in the check being changed into a boarding animation.

The only cheese that has been reported by the ever vigilant EASHL players is the difficulty in dealing with excessive dangling. A player equipped with nimble thumbs can easily deke and dangle his way from his own end to the slot and score -- checks and poke checks are generally rendered useless with a quick use of protect puck feature.

Fortunately, a recent tuner set pushed out by the developers attacked unrealistic dangling, and also made it nearly impossible to kill time in an unfair manner in your own zone when leading. If you hold on to the puck for a long period of time, especially if it is combined with a lot of sharp turns and dekes, your player will lose his balance on his own -- sometimes even resulting in a blown tire. What a brilliant idea to make the game just a little bit more realistic. Now people actually have to pass the puck around or face the consequences of fumbling the puck.

However, there is at least one thing EA missed during game testing. Apparently, you can assign plus-five skill boosts multiple times on different boost slots, which makes it possible to boost a skill up by plus-15, or even plus-30 in some cases. (How anyone finds these glitches I don't know. Maybe some people just spend hours and hours trying to mess with the game's logic. Personally, I'd rather spend that time playing the game the way EA intended.)

But even this juicing glitch has been addressed by EA. Unfortunately, the glitch can only be fixed with an official patch instead of a tuner, so we have to wait a bit longer before juicing is gone. But, whether it is via luck or because juicing is not that common, our club has luckily only come across one team who seemed to have everything going for them.

So with a patch coming our way, and a few tuners already out, it seems that EA is taking a more active path this year, trying to tune the game into something we can all live with and even enjoy.


So what do you think, is NHL 11 lactose intolerant or is it just that the cheese does not stink yet? See you in the playoffs my fellow EASHL junkies.