With the ten-year anniversary of EA Sports’ NHL 06 coming up next month, I figured now to be the perfect time for a trip down memory lane and a look back at the game that most people of a certain age view as EA’s series-defining effort.
The fall of 2005 was a big year not only for the NHL, which was trying to save face after a PR-nightmare of a lost season in 2004-05, but for EA Sports’ iconic series as well. The Vancouver-based developer’s edition of the previous year, which bore Markus Naslund on its cover, had received mixed reviews at best. The developer knew it would have to step up to the plate and celebrate the return of NHL hockey with a bang in order to restore its franchise to its former heights.
Step up they did. This game had it all; a ridiculously deep dynasty mode, fun yet challenging gameplay, once-in-a-lifetime skill moves, and the most lifelike recreation of the fastest game on ice at the time. Best of all, the game’s menus and in-arena atmosphere were bolstered by what was, for my money, the best soundtrack of any sports video game ever published.
So, let’s go back in time to the 2005-06 NHL, an era in which shootouts were new and trendy, Ed Belfour the Leafs’ netminder, and Jaromir Jagr was supposedly entering the twilight of his career.
Immediately upon firing up the game, you’re greeted by an awesome intro featuring all of the best NHL players of the day. Shot of Vinny Lecavalier, arguably the best player in hockey, cut to Miikka Kiprusoff, and oh my it’s a rematch of the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals! The intro then features a tidy highlight reel of out-of-this-world goals and crunching hits set to a heavy tune from American Head Charge.
The best part of the intro, hands down, is watching then-New York Islander Alexei Yashin get creamed by a hip check from Ottawa’s Bryan Smolinski of all people. The clip is doubly funny; Yashin had left Ottawa under ugly circumstances a couple years before and was reviled by Senators fans for the rest of his career, while Smolinski was hardly known as a punishing checker.
Once you arrive at the game’s main menu, you realize just how much game they packed into NHL 06. You can hop into a game immediately – yes, featuring the Atlanta Thrashers and Ilya Kovalchuk – or try and tackle Dynasty Mode.
For me personally, Dynasty Mode was where I wasted away most of my pre-teen hours. I’d sit huddled by the television late into the night, quickly mashing buttons and trying to turn my Thrashers team into a veritable contender by the far-away year of 2010.
There were just so many ways to attack it; you could take the then-hapless Chicago Blackhawks and turn them into an unfathomable dynasty by the 2010s, or create the Anchorage Beavers featuring your own black-eyed, stitched-up created captain and bring pro hockey to Alaska.
It was the little things that would keep me coming back, like trying to perfect my team’s line chemistry, or capture wily veterans like Sergei Fedorov or Bill Guerin at the trade deadline in the midst of a playoff push.
The dynasty mode played out differently, every single time. The only constant I can put my finger on throughout all of my save files was 21 year-old Rick Nash becoming superhuman. I’m talking like 2 points-per-game superhuman, à la Wayne Gretzky. Still, the simulation engine was pretty good overall and the depth of your ability to manage the team from both a head coach and general manager perspective was truly incredible.
On the ice, the game played like a dream. Less physical than NHL 2005, where you would find yourself getting your helmet knocked off on every second offensive zone entry, 06 gave players more control over the puck. While stickhandling, gamers could do easy forehand-backhand dekes to pretty decent effect and ‘star players’ pulled off disgusting moves with a simple flick of the right stick. NHL gamers were also given the ability to aim their shot for the first time.
EA Sports got virtually all on-ice things right, from the major core elements like skating physics to aesthetic details like the ice surface looking shabby at the end of a period versus at the beginning of the period.
Player models were fantastic by the standards of the day. Super-sized Leafs captain Mats Sundin looked thick, while Wade Redden looked appropriately scrawny in an Ottawa jersey and Dominik Hasek sprawled around like a baby chicken in his crease.
I haven’t even touched on the game’s other modes yet. They were unsurprisingly strong, too.
Season mode was just your classic run-and-gun. Make your trades for the short term, load up, and try to win a cup in a 29-, 58-, or 82-game season. Still tons of fun in a present day group setting, i.e. a boozefest, with people ‘GM-ing’ teams for one season.
“Dude, why the **** don’t my Hawks have Kane-r and Toews?” – the ‘lifelong’ Chicago Blackhawks fan who shotguns his team only to discover his best players in the year 2005 are Martin Lapointe and a washed-up Theo Fleury.
Other stellar modes were EA’s ‘World Tournament’, introduced the previous year, and ‘Free-for-All’, where usually a bobble-headed Chris Pronger would send Paul Kariya into the stratosphere before breaking in alone on Manny Legace.
The best of all, though, was the NHL ’94 retro mode. There really was nothing like playing out a Hartford v. Winnipeg showdown in pixelated form with stupidly unresponsive controls and thinking to yourself, ‘damn, guys in their thirties grew up with this and thought it was the best thing ever’.
Have I mentioned the game’s audio?
Though I might have been slightly biased towards the game’s edgy rock soundtrack, there were some true cult classics on the game which made spending hours toiling away on Dynasty Mode’s menus just a little more enjoyable. Atomic Love by Beatsteaks and Our Lawyer… by Fall Out Boy stand out as two of the most memorable (as in I have them on my iPhone to this day).
Commentary-wise, Jim Hughson was as solid as ever in tandem with Craig Simpson on colour. From a neutral standpoint, I honestly think NHL 06’s commentary duo beats the heck out of the most recent NHL games’ play-by-play. Besides, where can you find a gem like:
“Here comes Tie Domi, one of the most popular players ever with his junior team, the Peterborough Petes,” said by Hughson, likely the most respected hockey broadcaster of this era.
That’s all for me, I just wanted to pay homage to the game that defined my childhood experience in sports gaming. NHL 06 was a fantastic sports game which managed to get both the on- and off-ice elements of hockey right.
My Anchorage Beavers team just slumped to a 12th-place finish in the Western Conference. It’s May 2008, in the game at least. I’ve lost track of real time. My team’s leading scorer, 36 year-old Glen Murray, has just announced his retirement and the defending Cup-champion Leafs are on Line 1 offering Hal Gill around. It’s going to be a long night.
Main Photo via EA Sports
