Here’s a DM conversation I had today from friend of the newsletter JFresh:
NHL24 comes out next week and already folks are angry about certain players rated too low here and too high there.
Here’s what I think: don’t take the game’s ratings too seriously
There are certain things about how good hockey is played that are near-impossible to model in a rating-based system.
Let’s take two specific NHL24 attributes as examples.
1. Speed
Here’s the thing about speed in the real-life NHL: it doesn’t really matter how fast you are in a straight line, but rather:
How well you blend your skating with something else (ex: catching a pass or getting off the wall)
How smartly you change speed (accelerating or decelerating to fit the tactical need)
How quickly you transition from sprinting to gliding, pivoting or stopping
Being fast in a straight line is just a small piece of the skating pie.
It would be absolutely egregious to give 90+ speed attributes to players such as Guehle, Chiarot, Gudbranson etc. They can absolutely book it in a straight line if need be - the data proves it. But they’re nowhere close to being the best-skating Ds in the league.
Meanwhile, I generally agree with EA’s decisions above.
I wouldn’t be shocked if Quinn Hughes, Brayden Point and Johnny Gaudreau didn’t show up on the league’s max speed leaderboard, but these players have an elite ability to 1) move quickly while making a puck play, 2) select the right speed for a specific scenario and 3) shift up or down as needed to expose a defender. A player such as Andreas Athanasiou shouldn’t be rated 95 speed because he’s not nearly as well-rounded in how he uses his speed inside the game.
2. Deking
Against, I don’t have a problem with how EA rates the top stickhandlers in the NHL.
The thing to understand, however, is that elite stickhandlers in real life don’t just have quicker hands than average. They’re also better at finding easier/simpler/better plays.
The timeliness and incisiveness of elite NHLers are difficult for programmers to model. A more straightforward solution, one used in basically all sports video games, is to give star players higher ratings so that they can charge into a pile and come out with the puck regardless.
Sometimes the mark of a great deker is knowing when not to deke.
Maybe the right play is to reject the 1v1 duel, delay and then zip a pass between the Ds for a linemate to go on a breakaway.
Maybe the best move is no move at all, just pushing the puck out of the opponent’s reach instead of attempting to nutmeg him.
In the end, the richness of games such as NHL24 is in facing humans online. I especially prefer Online Versus (in which we play with stock NHL rosters) rather than HUT (where card-based teambuilding is both a time and money sink for avid players).
In chess the queen is stronger than the pawn.
In Chel Gaudreau is faster than Gudbranson.
It is what it is.
The real game is played by thinking people.