NHL 27 Game Update 1 Includes Improvements to Gameplay, Presentation and Much

The first NHL 27 update has arrived, bringing fixes and improvements across gameplay, Connected Franchise, Hockey Ultimate Team, presentation, commentary and more.

Gameplay gets a handful of changes aimed at making things play a little more naturally, particularly when it comes to the CPU. Forwards should do a better job of keeping possession when there’s open ice instead of dumping the puck, while diving poke checks should be used more appropriately depending on the situation. Defensive positioning has been adjusted on penalty-kill breakouts, charged passes from close range will keep their intended speed and several strategy and stability issues have been cleaned up.

Connected Franchise received a pretty big round of fixes covering league management, trades, free agency, rosters and stats. Commissioners can now force overtime and shootout wins, missing trade notifications have been fixed and Crossplay options are available in Find League, along with fixes for several crashes and softlocks. HUT gets some quality-of-life improvements too, including clearer reward paths, direct rewards instead of unnecessary packs, skippable Line Combination animations and more opponent information in Cup Chase.

EA touched on the discussion around NHL 27’s commentary as well, confirming John Buccigross and Darren Pang are working directly with the team as AI voice technology expands on more than 50 recording sessions they’ve already completed. This update addresses some repetitive lines and player-name pronunciations with more player and city names planned for future updates.

Presentation received some work with authentic Jumbotron content from 23 NHL teams, including team-specific intros, goals, crowd prompts and win celebrations. There are fixes for cameras, crowds, celebrations, player models, helmets, hair clipping and several arena-specific issues as well. That’s only part of what’s included in update 1. Make sure to check out the official blog for the full rundown of changes and fixes and let us know what you’re seeing.