Does the NHL video game need the randomness of elbowing and cross-checking penalties?
Here's another topic many chel players have been discussing throughout NHL 24's lifecycle. Why did EA Sports add elbowing and cross-checking penalties into the game? And does the video game need them in even though players are never meaningly going for an elbow or cross-check while playing?
Of course, the developers want their hockey game to be as realistic as possible. That’s why they’ve introduced something like the full pressure system, broken sticks (another hot topic), or as implemented this year, those excruciatingly random penalties of elbowing or cross-checking.
Now, before I talk about the elbowing discourse, I’ll say that the cross-checking penalty isn’t actually random. Players who utilize the push-check, or shove, animation to knock players off the puck will notice that if you spam up on your controller’s joystick while your opponent has their back to you, your player in the game will do a cross-check animation. But, if the opponent is face-to-face with you, I have not seen the cross-check animation activate.
It seems like the developers wanted to nullify players on being able to get that shove animation from behind on their opponents constantly. And this makes sense. Unless you have a full head of steam while approaching behind your opposition, then yes, you should be able to knock the player off the puck without any cross-check animation activating.
However, if your opponent has their back to you and you want to flick up on your joystick as many times as you want, it makes sense that your player in the game will deliver a cross-check because that is what a player would do in real life.
However, the elbowing penalty/animation, it is random. I’ve been playing NHL 24 since its release and have yet to figure out why the elbowing animation comes up. Discipline surely has a big factor in this. If your player’s discipline rating is low, then he may be more inclined to try and channel his inner Jacob Trouba.
Alas, the whole conversation about why an elbowing penalty should not be in the game is because when chel players throw a hit, they do not want their player to take a dumb penalty like elbowing. We already have to sometimes deal with random charging penalties.
Imagine it’s a tie game in the EA Sports NHL World Championship and you go to throw a hit, just trying to make your opponent lose possession, but your player decides a chicken-wing elbow to the face is what they want to do.
I understand wanting to make the game as realistic as possible, but I would bet 80% of chel players don’t want a random animation in the game to activate just for realism.
I'm okay with the cross-checking animation staying in the game, but the elbows should remain locked into the body and not return in NHL 25.