[duffman]

I was just about to post basically the same impressions you had BenVenom (same history with the game too heading back to NHLPA 93). All-star, full sim, 10 minute periods, the best thing I can say is that the flow of the game felt like a real game. There were stretches where neither me or the CPU could get through the neutral zone and the game would slow down, shifts where one side got pinned in their own end and just had to ice it, and some wide open stretches as well. Saw missed passes from CPU and the incidental contact is awesome on full sim since it makes it much, much harder to pull off big dekes in tight areas (finally!). Online will probably be a different story since it doesn't use full sim, but from the period and a half I got in during my lunch break it's the best offline vs CPU gameplay i've seen in a while. Turned off pass assist as well for a short time and it was even better. I've been missing a real manual passing option since nhl 14 on last gen, it just hasn't felt right to me on any of the current gen games.

The funny thing is that when I read one of the slider descriptions in-game, the one about how much incidental contact it takes to separate the puck, instantly I understood why the things that frustrated me so much on previous years were happening. Sticks through pucks, skates through pucks, and magically the other guy just holds onto it. So far, that seems to be gone on the full-sim setting.

I'm sure there will be the usual pile of stuff that annoys me after I play the heck outta the game, and we'll see what happens when I get together with my usual EASHL club guys and we watch the BS unfold there, but for now I'm waay more excited about this game than I was yesterday, even after having played a bunch of the EASHL portion of the beta.