For the past few weeks, the talk on some of the various hockey forums has been about attributes, and whether they have any effect on our beloved OTP pros. Speed and acceleration have been the most talked about attributes, but let's not forget about the numerous goalie attributes that we have no real info on.

Speed

When the first discussions about the speed attribute started, I was slightly skeptical when people would talk about how the most expensive attribute in the game was not worth upgrading. As someone who mostly plays defense for my EASHL club, I have never put much stock in speed because I play positional defense and rarely have to skate hard in any situation, but it still sounded wrong. Nevertheless, I boosted my 65 speed to see if I felt any difference.

A couple of OTP games later I was writing an email to the rest of my club to say, "remove the points you spent on speed and put them in balance and strength for a more balanced player; you won't regret it." If you only play OTP and cherry pick a lot, you might need an increase to 90 speed. But if you play as a team and move the puck by passing, you won't notice a difference.

At this point, all of our players have speed ratings that range from 65 to 75. Essentially, some have not taken the final plunge, so they boost their speed rating until the cost starts to rise too much. Even with these lower speed ratings, we have not been outskated once in the 15-20 games as a snail team. Our wingers might have missed a couple of breakaways, but they never score on them anyway.

Hustle

Now, what about hustle? How does that come into play if speed makes no difference? Hustling, if done in the right place at the right time, can be very effective. And the hustle rating does not appear to have much of a relation to your speed attribute. This lack of a correlation between the two attributes makes sense because it helps to explain why hustle seemed to have little to no effect on our previous builds -- that is, the ones where we still cared about boosting speed.

What Does This Mean?

There's a clear reason why boosting speed does not do much. The player attribute slider is clearly set on a certain decreased level in the EASHL settings, probably in an attempt to keep the playing field more even so talented legend card holders do not skate all over people who bought the game later on than the release-day fanatics.

The problem is, does anyone really want an even playing field? Shouldn't the game reward legend card holders instead of punishing them?

There are more consequences than a subdued speed rating. Most Elite clubs that my team has played against are just impossible to beat via physical domination. When most of the players on the ice have balance and strength boosted up into the 90s, they become almost uncheckable. And when it's two teams like this playing against each other, the game looks comical at times because it seems like every player is made out of rubber.

Lastly, there is the issue of boosts. Did you buy +5 speed like I did? Does it seem fair that you spent money on something that does not do anything?

In short, these are problems that could be avoided. The NHL developers could end the confusion by just clearly explaining in the game what each attribute really does. And by detailing the attributes, we could spend more time playing games rather than talking about which ratings do or do not matter.