Glenn has given his thoughts on the EASHL beta, and now I'm ready to hop in with my own thoughts.
 

EA's online Be a Pro mode has typically been overrun by an absurd amount of 5-foot-7 forwards and 6-foot-9 defensemen, but this year the developers chose to foster a more realistic on-ice experience by implementing unchangeable, standardized player classes that are similar to Team Fortress or Defense of the Ancients. The EASHL's gameplay has become much more balanced and realistic now that people cannot manipulate the height and weight systems to create goofy player builds like 5-foot-7 grinders or 6-foot-9 offensive defensemen.

Each class I have tried so far has had distinct advantages and disadvantages on the ice, with none of them seeming particularly overpowered or underpowered. This may end up being the best and most significant change to the EASHL in the mode's seven-year history. People love to hate on Hockey Ultimate Team, but we can probably thank the massive amount of microtransactions that HUT must be generating for EA to decide it would be fine to cut off NHL's other main revenue stream by removing purchasable attribute boosts from the EASHL. Thank you, HUT.
 

Now that 99-rated, all-around superstars no longer exist, good spacing, smart passing and in-sync cycling are even more necessary for team success than they were in previous editions of the EASHL. The days of being able to deke through the entire defense by yourself are pretty much much over now that puck control has been globally reduced, and stick checks are generally more effective. Most of the goals I have seen have come after a series of passes rather than a series of dekes, which is a welcome change from NHL 15.

In this beta, realistic hockey tactics are prevailing over video game cheese much more often than in past EA NHL games, and the reduced offensive player attributes and increased effectiveness of stick checks seem to be the main reasons why this is happening. I hope that EA does not upset this balance by the time NHL 16 is officially out just to please the portion of their customers who are mad they can no longer Datsyuk their way down the ice every possession.
 

Keeping your defender, the puck and cherry-picking forwards all on screen at once was pretty much impossible in previous NHL games, unless you bothered to set up a custom camera angle specifically for your defenseman. Since custom cameras still have not made the transition from the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 onto the Xbox One/PlayStation 4, EA has tried to solve a defender's vision issues by reworking how the dynamic camera angles function for NHL 16. Playing with the "dynamic high" camera option and auto zoom turned on is not as nice as being able to completely customize your view, but it at least makes a defenseman's job much easier than it was in NHL 15 -- you had to constantly press the touch pad to switch the camera's focus between tracking your player and focusing on the puck.

Next year we need to see the return of complete camera customization, but for this season the redesigned dynamic views work decently on defense. Do not expect to use any of these new camera styles if you're a forward, though, because the focus point is usually placed so far up the ice in the offensive zone that you can't even see your defensemen and will be forced to make a lot of blind passes back to the point.
 

Even with auto-aim disabled and manual passing enabled, NHL 15 had so much computer assistance built into those two acts that it always felt like the puck went where the game wanted it to, rather than where your joysticks were telling it to go. Your directional inputs on shots and passes have a much larger impact on where the puck actually goes in NHL 16, which lets you be much more creative with bank passes and dumps into open space.

You can also aim shots in places that you simply could not target last year because a longstanding bug that used to prevent players from shooting five hole has finally been fixed. The individual passing and shooting attributes for each class seem to be much more important than they were in previous EASHL iterations, as difficult maneuvers like throwing saucer passes from your backhand or shooting against your body's momentum while skating at full speed are pretty tough to perform unless you're using the playmaker or sniper builds, respectively.
 

I appreciate that EA's attempting to make goaltenders more realistic. It's also good that the developers are trying to stop users who would just sit in the center of the goal line in butterfly stance all game long (it was a tactic that was too successful from NHL 09 to NHL 15). However, these new goalie controls and animations are completely dysfunctional in their current state. Every single move is unresponsive. After you've made your button press, it takes a half-second until the goalie finally starts animating on screen. Desperation saves are difficult to use in a reactionary fashion now that they're split between the square and circle buttons. The remapped layout of the triggers and bumpers makes little sense, considering the fact that you will want to use the precision movement most of the game -- requiring you to keep the left trigger held down, and likely creating a large imprint on your index finger after only a game or two.

Shuffling should be the default movement type, with your slides being activated by the left bumper because those moves are used so sparingly. Instead, hugging the post is foolishly assigned to the left bumper (it should be on the left trigger), which is tough to grab any time you also need to hold the right trigger to drop your paddle down. Getting on and off the post happens much too slowly, making all of the wraparound dancers you will meet online infuriating to play against. The only good thing I can say about NHL 16's newly designed goaltenders is that passing and handling the puck from an upright stance feels a lot better now that goalies can actually skate with the puck.
 

Of the 25 games I have attempted, three have crashed back to the PlayStation dashboard, and three have been crippled by a full second of input lag, which made it impossible to be a productive player on the ice. Now, 24 percent is a rather high failure rate for matches so I hope that EA figures out what's causing these issues by September 15. Veterans of NHL 15's Online Team Play had to suffer through crippling input lag all last year so it will be a major bummer if the application's stability and online performance continue to flounder on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One -- these areas of the game were never problematic on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
 

Strategies And Control Settings Are Not Saving

If you have been bothered by having to reset all of your team's strategies and your own controller settings every single game, the good news is that EA claims gamers will be able to permanently save their preferred controller options in the retail version of NHL 16 (be gone, auto backstate!). The bad news is that EA has not said anything about team strategies, so I presume those will still have to be set every match.

Strategies are even more troublesome to setup in NHL 16 than they were in NHL 15 because you can't make any changes to your circle/square button settings while the other team has the puck. On top of that, you're only given a half-second at most to make changes after whistles and before faceoffs. I have frequently found myself unable to pick the appropriate faceoff formation just because the window to make changes is so tiny. There have also been games where it has taken me an entire period to get our team settings corrected, which would not be a problem at all if EA would just let users set all this stuff up before starting a game. I can do that for my HUT team so why not for my EASHL team?
 

For the first time in series history, NHL's AI actually seems competent at protecting the middle portion of the ice. I will limit my compliments to "competent" because the AI will still occasionally make some stupid coverage mistakes in front of the net (see footage above).

That said, I have consistently noticed AI defenders disrupting seam passes and dislodging the puck from human skaters as they're coming down into the high slot for a quick shot off the rush, which is something that would never happen in previous iterations of this mode. I'm disappointed, though, that there's still no resistance whatsoever while carrying the puck through the neutral zone. The CPU will also let the offense skate all around the boards in the offensive zone without even thinking about applying any pressure. But at least the AI is doing a decent job of protecting the most dangerous part of the ice now.
 

While your AI teammates are pretty reliable now as defenders, the only thing you can count on them doing on offense is turning the puck over time and time again. The AI constantly has trouble trying to clear the puck out of the defensive zone. It also does a terrible job trying to navigate through neutral-zone traffic.

On offense, your CPU teammates tend to overpass instead of taking open shots. The few shots they do choose to take are usually fired from terrible angles or are blocked by defenders who are standing directly in the shooting lane. Even if you press the right bumper and tell the AI to take an open shot, it will often respond by throwing a clumsy looking backhand on net. Basically, the more AI players that are on the ice, the less fun you're going to have. While the CPU should not be outperforming the average human skater (it stinks that the AI is almost always the superior option at goaltender), CPU-controlled teammates should at least be capable of making sensible decisions with the puck and reliably covering their area of the ice.
 

To me, the most annoying part of EA's NHL games has always been watching helplessly while human-controlled teams repeatedly avoid defensive zone faceoffs by telling their goalie to pass the puck out through traffic or sending it safely into the corner right after the goalie makes a save and goes into a covered up position. This is the most ridiculous and unrealistic tactic that the game currently allows, and it's been an issue with the NHL series going all the way back to the 16-bit era.

Part of the problem is that there's still some sort of invisible force field preventing nearby attacking players from collecting loose pucks on their stick and shoveling it back into the net. And if you somehow manage to get a quick shot off, the AI goalie can still magically transition out of a pass animation and go right into a sprawling, sliding save in a split-second's time.

The other problem is that a ref should be blowing his whistle as soon as the goalie swallows up the puck, immediately calling the play dead and signaling a faceoff. Instead, the defending team has a few seconds after the save occurs to toss the puck out through multiple bodies, or start a cheap, undeserved breakout down the boards and up the other end of the ice. No hockey team at any level plays like this; no ref at any level would allow this. Regardless, it remains one of the most obnoxious aspects of EA's NHL games.
 

For the second year in a row, the best breakaway move in NHL is making no move at all. Instead, the go-to goalie beater involves carrying the puck towards the side of the net and then roofing it into the top corner with your backhand at the last possible second. This would be an extremely low-percentage, difficult-to-perform shot in real life. However, it remains a money play after a successful tie up on an offensive zone faceoff in NHL 16 because EA has not changed any of their scripted faceoff routines.

Basic forehand-backhand and backhand-forehand fakes also continue to be overly effective in NHL 16, but why bother with any of those "fancy" dekes when all you have to do to beat the goalie is skate sideways and lob a high backhand top shelf?
 

Since the Sega Genesis days, EA's goalies have always struggled to stop the simple act of skating from the side of the rink into the middle of the ice and shooting against the grain. Nothing seems to have changed here for NHL 16. Cheesy, short-side wristers are still super easy to score with in this beta unless you have a human goaltender backing your team up.
 

Just like last year, collisions from any angle except 90 and 180 degrees frequently fail to trigger an appropriate physics interaction, especially when the puck carrier is skating in a protective stance. This was a major issue in NHL 15, often allowing the player to keep carrying the puck down the wing without breaking stride while defenders would just bounce off the puck carrier without any sort of reaction animation from the offensive player. This physics flaw has not been corrected in NHL 16, as shown in the short clip above where a whiffed body check ends up costing the blue team the game.
 

I'm glad that deflecting point shots has become a reliable scoring method (especially if the deflector is a grinder or power forward), but it sucks that I have not seen a single slap shot or wrist shot score from beyond the slot in 25 games played. Scoring a greasy, Kings-style redirect feels great, but I'm still waiting to see some Shea Weber-style bombs that beat goalies to the back of the net before they can even react.
 

Another issue with point shots is that they rarely injure the defenders who block them, even if the puck strikes them in an unprotected area. Blocked shot injuries are a common occurrence at every level of hockey, but I only saw a single one (captured above) in over a hundred games of NHL 15, and I have yet to see one in NHL 16.

Injuries can at least happen after body checks in this EASHL beta, but the frequency seems like it should be much higher than it is, especially when the same playmakers and snipers are getting their puny bodies crushed by burly power forwards and giant defensemen all game long. Hockey is a much more dangerous sport than NHL 16 makes it out to be. Plus, most EASHL offenses are not going to be very interested in moving the puck around the blue line -- risking a turnover that could turn into a breakaway -- when the defense can easily slide inside and clog up all the perimeter shooting lanes without any fear of physical repercussions.
 

I have spent a lot of this article talking about AI issues, so as you've probably concluded by now, 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 games can sometimes be a drag with so many brain-dead CPU players bumbling around on the ice. But any time you can bring together four or more club members, this version of the EASHL is a ton of fun. Join one of the Operation Sports clubs if you have not already, and we'll see you on the ice!