NHL 27 review – Great enhancements, terrible menus

As a Canadian, it is in my DNA to love the game of hockey. While my favorite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, are likely to disappoint me once again for the 2026-2027 season, I can at least enjoy another season of hockey through EA’s latest creation. 

While the various modes aren’t getting major overhauls – HUT, CHEL, Franchise Mode, and more – there are a number of gameplay and presentation tweaks to get excited about for this year’s hockey release.

Better presentation, more realistic atmosphere

Arenas in NHL 27 are more realistic than ever. Your favorite team now plays out of a building that feels more like their actual home rink than ever before. Team-specific goal songs are probably the best way the atmosphere has become more realistic, but other changes have made things better as well.

From key identifying arena locations to specific team chants to realistic and accurate jumbotrons, playing a game at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto in NHL 27 now feels like playing a game at the actual Scotiabank Arena. 

These changes aren’t doing anything to your gameplay, but presentation is a lot more important than we like to think, and the NHL video game franchise has been very lacking in this area compared to its soccer and football counterparts. 

A brand-new commentary team has been introduced this year, highlighted by the wonderful color commentary man, Darren Pang. Between reworked replays, more realistic fan reactions, and commentary that better fits in the actual in-game moment, watching someone play a game of NHL, or experiencing it yourself as the player, is better than ever.

Perfect? No. Will I think I’m actually watching an NHL game? Also, no. But it is better, and I think it’s worth celebrating improvements.

Brand new mode

While fan-favorite modes like Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) and World of CHEL are back for another season, EA has taken the traditional Franchise mode online with Connected Franchise. I don’t often dabble in the game’s Franchise Mode, but for those who love running a team from the front office, now being able to do it online with friends definitely takes this to the next level.

I can definitely see a group of friends creating their own league and running their own franchises against one another. The downside here is that this mode does require a PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass subscription, so it does come at a cost.

It is little innovations like this that make upgrading to the new NHL title worth it for those who love to play online. 

New gameplay mechanics add to the realism

Playbooks are the big new addition to NHL 27. While each team has their own unique playbook that is representative of the team itself, you can always alter playbook style prior to loading into games. 

These playbooks are not just window dressing. How teams set up their powerplays, how they break out of their own zone, and how they defend will translate on screen, so playing to a team’s strengths will definitely increase your chances of winning games. How accurate these playbooks are to teams will probably be more apparent as more team-specific fans get their hands on the game.

Taking advantage of a team’s way of playing is definitely more noticeable on harder difficulty levels, though. If you tend to play NHL on anything up to professional difficulty, you can completely ignore a team’s preferred playstyle and still easily win games.

EA has also tweaked specific in-game mechanics to make the game feel more realistic, and to eliminate past, overpowered mechanics. The big change this year, one that is quite noticeable, is how players get bumped off the puck more frequently. Even little amounts of body contact can dislodge a puck, as would happen in a real hockey game. This change makes the game more frustrating to play, but more realistic at the same time.

Something doesn’t feel quite right

For as good as the gameplay feels in NHL 27, getting to it is a chore on my PlayStation 5. I’ve been playing a ton of HUT, and I’ve found the menus clunky and slow. For as much as you need to do in HUT – opening packs, collecting objectives when complete, editing lineups – I really wish getting from A to B to C was much smoother.

I find getting into games equally as clunky. With HUT especially, I want to quickly get into matches or HUT Moments, complete them, and quickly move on to the next thing. Sadly, it’s menu after menu, and it’s not quick either. When compared to Football Ultimate Team in EA’s soccer franchise, this one is definitely lagging behind.

Another issue I encountered in HUT was that packs or items for me to open were not displayed with alerts in the shop, so I wouldn’t know they were there without actually opening those menus. I’m sure this is an issue that will get patched eventually, but it was a bit annoying.

Still a great experience

Clunky navigation is my major issue with the experience. I think the enhancements to the NHL formula have been good. Like with any sports title, the jump between years is rarely ground-breaking, and I’d argue that is the case again for NHL 27.

If you love hockey video games and you play them often, none of this really matters. This is a marginally better experience than NHL 26, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They do maintain an excellent difficulty system and a wide variety of control options, making NHL 27 accessible to players of all skill levels. If there is one thing EA does really well with their sports titles, it is the accessibility. 

If you are a casual EA NHL fan at best, I’d provide the advice I always provide: skip every other yearly installment. So if you bought NHL 26, I’m not sure there is enough here to justify picking up NHL 27. But if the last title you played was NHL 25 or earlier, now is a great time to jump in and get a few years of great enhancements to the experience.

What you might want to know

Authored by Adam Roffel

Adam has been writing about video games since 2014 and board games since 2018. If he's not rooting for the Toronto Maple Leafs or Toronto FC, he definitely has a controller in his hand - probably playing on a Nintendo platform - or is sitting at a table playing a board game. Adam also has firm opinions on a few key topics: there are much better board games than Settlers of Catan, and Nintendo doesn't need to compete with Sony and Microsoft.

Full Bio Adam Roffel