Tips and tricks.

[Gagnon39]

I've been messing around with the free skate and have actually learned quite a bit about the new skating engine. I figured maybe we could share some tips and tricks that we've picked up while playing the demo or just general tips from past NHL games that some of us might not know.

One thing I was struggling with was simply scoring on breakaways on the free skate mode. I bet I was stopped 90-95% of the time. But that was because I was playing the game as if it was NHL 12. Here's what I finally figured out.

Gliding, as compared to skating with the puck makes you MUCH more accurate and deadly offensively. Which actually makes quite a bit of sense. This is not to say you can't score while skating but I've noticed that my shot accuracy and my deking ability is increased tremendously when I glide as opposed to skate. If you haven't tried it, do so. I promise you'll notice a difference.

[meep3162]

Completely agree about the gliding. It's almost impossible to stickhandle and deke the goalie if you're not gliding. Good tip.

[Kadgo]

yes and the glinding unlock new animation to turn quickly really usefull to deke the goalie. you can see that in the tutorial.

[Gagnon39]

I've found that in addition to deking with the right analog stick, moving the left stick side to side (your feet) also helps. As meep3162 said, you can initiate new and different types of dekes this way. I absolutely love this aspect of the game.

[LREC]

I've been having trouble deking in the demo just because how heavy the players feel, but I did notice something that gives me hope.

Practicing breakaways and shootouts and you go into a glide, you have a pretty good chance or rifling a wrist shot past the goalie. In NHL 11 or 12 you pretty much had to deke, since shooting a basic shot since had a low percentage of scoring.

Much more realistic in my opinion; in real life you don't see many players deke on breakaways or shootouts, most just go ahead and take a wrist shot. Still hard to stop, because of the open space you have with no defenders you can focus on accuracy in real life.