NHL 20 Thread

[-Vintage Canuck-]

HUT game modes:

 

Quote

There’s a way to play for everyone in Hockey Ultimate Team™ (HUT) 20! Once you build your team, you can play and compete in a variety of online and offline game modes that will earn you rewards to help improve your HUT team. Find out about all the HUT Game Modes below.

SQUAD BATTLES
Hockey Ultimate Team introduces a new way to play in Squad Battles, the fan-favorite mode from EA SPORTS™ FIFA that allows you to compete and earn big rewards in offline battles. New opponents are refreshed every day, including weekly Featured Squads assembled by NHL® players, artists, hockey influencers, and athletes from around the world. Squad Battles introduces a brand new way to compete, earn and collect your dream team as you take on the best teams assembled by the biggest names in sports and entertainment.

HUT CHALLENGES
You can compete in HUT Challenges for a chance to earn unique rewards that will help you build your team. You can choose to do the HUT Challenges by yourself or cooperatively with a friend. HUT Challenges are updated with dynamic content and new rewards to earn, making them the perfect way to get a quick hockey fix.

ONLINE SEASONS
In HUT Online Seasons, take your HUT team and compete against other players to try to win your way from Division 10 all the way to Division 1. If you win a division title in HUT Online Seasons, you will earn an Online Seasons Reward Pack and a coin bonus.

HUT COMPETITIVE SEASONS
Returning to NHL® 20 is the Hockey Ultimate Team™ Competitive Seasons mode. HUT Competitive Seasons allows you to compete in a calendar season format to earn in-game rewards. Each HUT Competitive Season has a unique theme to it and puts you head-to-head against the best players in HUT. 

A HUT Competitive Season consists of rounds. Within each round, you can earn round points which determine your ranking on the Round Leaderboards after you complete a specific amount of games. You can continue to play to earn more points and better your ranking in the round! At the end of each round, you will earn a reward as well as Season Points that count towards your season total. Finish as high as you can in each round to accumulate as many season points as possible to earn a larger reward at the end of the season!

HUT CHAMPIONS
HUT Champions is where the best HUT players compete against each other for awesome prizes. A new season of HUT Champions starts every week, running from Monday to the following Sunday.

HUT Champions consists of a qualification period and a Weekend Season. In order to participate in the Weekend Season, a player must earn a Qualification Collectible. To earn a Qualification Collectible, players must do one of the following:

• Win a Division 1 Title in Online Seasons during the qualification period
• Place as one of the Top 1,500* in one of three Qualifiers that are held during the qualification period
• Place as one of the Top 250 in the previous week's HUT Champions Weekend Season (only applicable to season 2+).
• Qualifiers are open to all players who have not already earned and claimed a Qualification Collectible.

*The ranking needed in the Qualifiers to obtain the Qualification Collectible is subject to change, may vary by weekly competition, and will be communicated in the “More Info” and “Season Prizing” screens in the Competitive Season/Play Online section of the game prior to the start of each weekly competition. If a player does not place high enough, they will not earn a Qualification Collectible.

DRAFT CHAMPIONS
Draft Champions lets you experience the thrill of the fantasy draft with fast rounds of superstar picks. Each round challenges you to choose current and past NHL players and build a team that fits your play style. Immediately following your draft, take to the ice and fulfill your team’s potential by winning the Draft Championship.

OTHER MODES
HUT also has other options for you to play, such as challenging the Team of the Week or an Exhibition game against a computer-controlled team. You can also challenge a friend to an online match through the Play-A-Friend mode. Additionally, you can play co-op with another friend online in all HUT game modes except for Squad Battles, HUT Competitive Seasons and HUT Champions.

****Only the player that is hosting the HUT game will be eligible to receive the in-game rewards.

https://www.ea.com/games/nhl/nhl-20/news/nhl-20-hut-game-modes

[Chickenspear]

On 8/8/2019 at 2:30 PM, -Vintage Canuck- said:

CREATING CHEMISTRY
We're moving to a two-man booth and we want our Color commentator to be just involved in calling the action while the play is ongoing as our play-by-play commentator is. Traditional roles would see the colour man hold back until a stoppage in play. This is not what we want. Instead, we'll favour back and forth interaction between both men in the booth instead of wall-to-wall commentary from just the play-by-play man.

 

We’ve achieved this chemistry by dramatically increasing our time in the recording booth. With Cybulski and Ferraro based just minutes away from EA Vancouver, they are able to develop their tone together weekly in the studio. In NHL 19, we could only get about 30 hours of session time with our previous commentary team. This year, we spent over ten times that in the booth to get the quantity and quality of commentary that sets a new foundation for years to come.

 

We encourage our commentators to always express opinions about players, teams, and hockey in general in order to provoke thought and debate. If a player isn't playing well, even if that player is you, our commentary team will let you know it.

Awesome, I was getting tired of hearing that one joke doc knows. Or the icing anecdote.  I think what they should do next year is get the regional broadcast crews for each team (eg. John and John for Vancouver). Could record the voices throughout the season (they're already doing the work anyways), then you'd get actual authentic reactions to different scenarios... not a 'nucks game if you don't hear about ketchup, or some s*** from garrett 

[-Vintage Canuck-]

CHEL Notes - Franchise Mode Deep Dive:

 

Quote

Hey, this is Gurn Sumal the Game Modes producer on EA SPORTS™️ NHL® 20. Last year we introduced an all-new scouting system, this year we wanted to build upon that by introducing coaches to Franchise Mode.

By adding coaches, it allowed us to add additional features such as line chemistry, a brand-new conversation system, and new scouting reports. All these new features tie back to the coaching staff of the team to affect the meta of building a team. In addition, we added some smaller quality of life features such as Trade Finder.

 

 

COACHES

 

Like any feature we develop, we want to add as much depth as possible and we think we did this with our implementation of coaches. We have a wide variety of fantasy coaches that get generated at the beginning of Franchise Mode. Much like scouts, coaches will have their own set of ratings and roles but, in addition, they will have to deal with morale and staff chemistry.

As for ratings, coaches are broken down by 6 rating attributes:

• Offense
• Defense
• Powerplay
• Penalty kill
• Teaching
• Influence

 

 

Each of these has a distinct impact to the team. The Offense, Defense, Powerplay and Penalty Kill attributes have direct impact to gameplay and game simulations. Teaching can grow or stunt player development on the team via player potential. Each coach also has teaching specialty, these simply let the user know what type of player the coach likes to teach. Influence ties into the growth of coaches, having a head coach with high influence will help grow the coaching staff faster. Coaches will also accumulate stats and can be awarded the Jack Adams Trophy during the end of season awards.

Coaches in NHL 20 have morale just like players. By adding the coaches, it allowed us to revamp player morale by adding 4 different morale meters, which combine to affect both on-ice and off-ice components of the game:

COACH MORALE

• Team Performance
• Management
• Coaching Staff
• Player Relationships

 

 

INTERVIEWS

 

In addition to standard conversations, we now also have interviews. You can interview a coach prior to offering them a contract to get extra details on the type of team they are looking to coach, the market they prefer, and fan base they gravitate towards. We also added draft day interviews which allows you to interview prospects prior to the draft to unveil extra scouting information.

 

 

One thing to note is that other teams will hire and fire coaches throughout the year as well. Each team has expectations for the coaches based on their team’s expectations. The AI will put coaches on the hot seat during the year if they go on a long losing streak, miss the playoffs, or simply don’t meet team expectations. NHL Players will also retire and become coaches, so you’ll see them behind the bench in the game.

 

SCHEME FIT AND LINE CHEMISTRY

 

Scheme Fit summarizes how well all the players fit on their current lines. This is based on the strategies the coach has set for their lineup, the style each individual player likes to play and their preferred position. This is one of the main building blocks to line chemistry. 

 

 

You’ll notice in the Edit Lines screen, there is a lot more information available to the user. You now can juggle lines to get the best line chemistry possible. Chemistry ranges from -5 -/ +5 and these ratings have an affect in both gameplay and during simulations. Coaches now have the ability to deploy lines and construct lines in different ways. Some coaches will want a balanced attack while others will want to play their top-tier players as much as possible.

 

SCOUTING REPORTS

 

This year you’ll be able to use our new scouting reports to find players. We have 2 new Amateur Scouting Reports and 2 new Pro Reports. The Pro Scout Assessment is very important as it’s the best way to determine if a player fits your coaches’ scheme and where in the lineup they fit. You may want to get a player at a lower OVR rating that fits your scheme than a player with a higher OVR rating that doesn’t fit your scheme; the lower rated player may give you a bigger chemistry boost while the higher overall player may ruin your line’s chemistry.

 

 

As for the amateur reports, we have added NHL ETA and Scheme Fit. The NHL ETA gives the user a better idea of when a player may be ready to compete in the NHL. The Scheme Fit report gives you a breakdown of the strategies the prospect likes to play, giving you the information needed to get a player that can fit in your scheme. This is another decision point for the user to make when drafting a player; will you reach to take the player that fits the team scheme or do you take the best pick available.

 

TRADE FINDER

 

Lastly, NHL 20 introduces the new Trade Finder which allows the user to make trades faster without having to go back-and-forth with trade proposals between teams. You can now select the assets you want to trade and get offers for them. You can also pick players from other teams to discover their asking price. This has made trading a lot more accessible and faster, however the traditional trade system is still available to players.

 

 

OTHER CHANGES

• PTS/G Trade Value Mod - This gives players trade value boost or penalties based on how they are performing during the year. Players playing well can be traded for more value in trades and vice versa (goalies use SV%).
• PTS/G Salary Mod - Performance based Salaries; Players who do exceptionally well will ask for a lot more money. In some sims players reaching 100+ points and asks for 10 million dollars, in other sims the same player has sub 1.00 PPTS/G and asks for ~8 million. This should also fix the issue where players who are in the minors and ask for 2M+ without ever playing in the NHL.
• Teams will now put bad contracts on the trade block to free up cap space if an RFA (Restricted Free Agent) player wants a contract extension and they don't have cap space.
• Goalies are now worth less than skaters in regards to trade value and we have improved goalie signing and trading logic in Free Agency.
• Players with 1 year left on their deals will have less value as the season goes on. So at the Trade Deadline, players with 1 year left will be worth less than full value and at the NHL Draft, these players will be worth significantly less.
• Players with bad value can be traded with addition of sweeteners to a trade. Increased the Bad Contract Mod so players with bad contracts require a lot to be added so a team will accept the trade.
• Added exception contracts to the game. So players in the QMJHL, WHL and OHL don't count towards the 50 man contract limit.
• Added a Trade Alert popup that stops the sim if someone in the league makes a big trade.
• Added a Sim Engine scoring Setting; increases scoring or decreases scoring based on the setting (High, Med, Low). The default is set to medium.
• Wingers are now worth less than centers and defensemen in regards to trade value.
• We decreased Scout efficiency so now you won't have full info on all the draft-eligible at the end of the year. This should stop users from stacking Elite players in the NHL Draft.
• Tuned Down the number of Elite and Franchise potential goalies in the draft.
• Tuned the distribution of medium grade prospects so they are a little more hit and miss.
• Added Scout Recommendations to the View Draft Class Screen.
• Tuned the trade blocks of CPU teams wants/gives.
• Added original placements to the Draft Lottery popup.
• Added an 'Add contract year' setting for Expansion Custom Rosters flow.
• Added 'Auto-Owner mode' setting which takes care of arena maintenance.

https://www.ea.com/games/nhl/nhl-20/news/franchise-mode

[Kuzy]

2 hours ago, -Vintage Canuck- said:

CHEL Notes - Franchise Mode Deep Dive:

 

https://www.ea.com/games/nhl/nhl-20/news/franchise-mode

Honestly that Loui trade wouldn't be so bad if we ended up keeping our 2021 1st.

[86Viking]

LE rated a 79!?!? Whoever decides player ratings has been smoking too much of the GREEN stuff...Guy is waiver fodder should be low 60's, maybe in the 70s rating wise for the AHL is what they meant??

[goalie13]

18 hours ago, Canuckster86 said:

LE rated a 79!?!? Whoever decides player ratings has been smoking too much of the GREEN stuff...Guy is waiver fodder should be low 60's, maybe in the 70s rating wise for the AHL is what they meant??

That seems a little harsh.

 

It's not that hard to stock a team with guys that are all 80+.  So having LE at 79 puts him on the bubble.  He did still score 29 pts last year.

[ftmN]

Lots of these franchise mode changes sound quite good, hopefully they tweak the scouting of last year to make it more like scouting on the previous gen.

[Tre Mac]

Dam these changes, it's like they actually listened to the masses for once.  Madden 20 is really good so I'll probably buy NHL20 as well.

 

• PTS/G Trade Value Mod - This gives players trade value boost or penalties based on how they are performing during the year. Players playing well can be traded for more value in trades and vice versa (goalies use SV%).
• PTS/G Salary Mod - Performance based Salaries; Players who do exceptionally well will ask for a lot more money. In some sims players reaching 100+ points and asks for 10 million dollars, in other sims the same player has sub 1.00 PPTS/G and asks for ~8 million. This should also fix the issue where players who are in the minors and ask for 2M+ without ever playing in the NHL.
• Teams will now put bad contracts on the trade block to free up cap space if an RFA (Restricted Free Agent) player wants a contract extension and they don't have cap space.
• Goalies are now worth less than skaters in regards to trade value and we have improved goalie signing and trading logic in Free Agency.
• Players with 1 year left on their deals will have less value as the season goes on. So at the Trade Deadline, players with 1 year left will be worth less than full value and at the NHL Draft, these players will be worth significantly less.
• Players with bad value can be traded with addition of sweeteners to a trade. Increased the Bad Contract Mod so players with bad contracts require a lot to be added so a team will accept the trade.
• Added exception contracts to the game. So players in the QMJHL, WHL and OHL don't count towards the 50 man contract limit.
• Added a Trade Alert popup that stops the sim if someone in the league makes a big trade.
• Added a Sim Engine scoring Setting; increases scoring or decreases scoring based on the setting (High, Med, Low). The default is set to medium.
• Wingers are now worth less than centers and defensemen in regards to trade value.
• We decreased Scout efficiency so now you won't have full info on all the draft-eligible at the end of the year. This should stop users from stacking Elite players in the NHL Draft.
• Tuned Down the number of Elite and Franchise potential goalies in the draft.
• Tuned the distribution of medium grade prospects so they are a little more hit and miss.
• Added Scout Recommendations to the View Draft Class Screen.
• Tuned the trade blocks of CPU teams wants/gives.
• Added original placements to the Draft Lottery popup.
• Added an 'Add contract year' setting for Expansion Custom Rosters flow.
• Added 'Auto-Owner mode' setting which takes care of arena maintenance.

 

Been wanting this for ages.

[Devron]

Just please have new play by play guys. I do not like them, I do not. They’ve repeated the same crap for 5 years. What the heck is a helmet mask anyway 

[goalie13]

On 8/22/2019 at 7:43 PM, Devron44 said:

Just please have new play by play guys. I do not like them, I do not. They’ve repeated the same crap for 5 years. What the heck is a helmet mask anyway 

Your wish has been granted.

 

 

[CanucksCountry]

 

Wonder who is going to be on our team

[Bilbro Baggins]

Does anyone know anything about EA acquiring different leagues to be in the game this year?  I just ask because I noticed that Jack Hughes was already in the game, despite in previous years, players needing to play their first NHL or AHL game before they had the rights to use them in game. And obviously NCAA/USHL were not in previous editions. As well supposedly Kravtsov and Shestyorkin are on the list of players who’ve been face scanned for their in game characters, despite both of these players playing in the KHL all of last season

[Devron]

5 hours ago, Bilbro Baggins said:

Does anyone know anything about EA acquiring different leagues to be in the game this year?  I just ask because I noticed that Jack Hughes was already in the game, despite in previous years, players needing to play their first NHL or AHL game before they had the rights to use them in game. And obviously NCAA/USHL were not in previous editions. As well supposedly Kravtsov and Shestyorkin are on the list of players who’ve been face scanned for their in game characters, despite both of these players playing in the KHL all of last season

Interesting to see be nice if KHL and US hockey were involved this year. As far as Hughes he’s technically signed by NJ therefore he’s in the game. Don’t necessarily need to play your first pro game to be in the game 

Edited September 2, 2019 by Devron44

[Chickenspear]

On 8/30/2019 at 3:28 PM, CanucksCountry said:

 

Wonder who is going to be on our team

I swear to fk, if Messier is on that team, I'm going to organize a protest outside the front doors of EA. Burning Messier effigy on a hockey stick.

[Tre Mac]

On 8/30/2019 at 3:28 PM, CanucksCountry said:

 

Wonder who is going to be on our team

I wondering who's going to be on Hartford lol.  Francis, Brind'amor, Pronger, Wesley?  I can't even get a starting lineup.

[-Vintage Canuck-]

Top 50 Players in NHL 20:

 

[goalie13]

46 minutes ago, Tre Mac said:

I wondering who's going to be on Hartford lol.  Francis, Brind'amor, Pronger, Wesley?  I can't even get a starting lineup.

Maybe Ray Ferraro?  Then he would be calling a game that he's also playing in.  

[-Vintage Canuck-]

CHEL Notes - Hockey Ultimate Team:

 

Quote

Hi Everyone, this is Andrew Marks HUT Producer and Nicholas Shewchuk Live Content Producer on EA SPORTS™️ NHL® 20. We’re here to tell you about some of the improvements and changes coming to HUT this year.

Squad Battles

NHL 20 introduces Squad Battles to HUT. Squad Battles is a Single-Player competition that you may be familiar with if you’ve played FIFA Ultimate Team. New opponents are available every day, including weekly Featured Squads assembled by NHL® players, artists, hockey influencers, and athletes from around the world.

Every day in Squad Battles you’ll be given 4 new opponents to play. These opponents can be ‘refreshed’ to play new opponents every 24 hours on weekdays, and 12 hours on weekends (schedule below). Once you refresh opponents, you’ll lose the ability to play any unplayed games, so if you want to play all 37 games in a week make sure you don’t refresh your opponents before playing them. Note that if you don’t login to refresh opponents during an available window, you won’t be able to play those games.

While these are Single-Player games, the opponents are real players’ teams from the NHL Ultimate Team community. Playing games in Online Seasons, Competitive Seasons, HUT Champions, and Squad Battles played, has a chance to save your team as someone else’s Squad Battles opponent.

You can also choose to replay any opponent once (excluding the Featured Squad) for a cost of 500 coins. This can be useful in cases where you think you can increase the Battle Points earned for that game, such as increasing or lowering the difficulty. Replays are optional, and once opponents have been refreshed you’ll lose the ability to replay those opponents.


The Opponent Select screen will give you some basic information about your opponent’s team, such as Team OVR, Team Logo, and Synergy Impact. Synergy Impact is a simple bar which shows a combination of Team OVR and Active Synergies, giving you a quick look at how Synergies impact the team’s overall ability. When you select an opponent, you’ll also see their Offensive Pressure and Defensive Pressure they’ve set in their Team Strategies. If you’d like to set your own Team Strategies, they can be found in ‘My Team’ → ‘Manage Lineups’ → ‘Strategies’.

Day	Window Start Time	Window Duration
Thursday	2pm PT	24 hours
Friday	2pm PT	12 hours
Saturday	2am PT, 2pm PT	12 hours, 12 hours
Sunday	2am PT, 2pm PT	12 hours, 24 hours
Monday	2pm PT	24 hours
Tuesday	2pm PT	24 hours
Wednesday	2pm PT	24 hours
Thursday	2pm PT	Season Ends
Friday	2pm PT	Rewards Granted

Battle Points

Each game played earns Battle Points. Battle Points earned are based on several factors:

• Difficulty Selected – Earn more Battle Points on higher difficulties
• Opponent OVR - Earn slightly more points for beating teams with higher OVRs
• Game Outcome – Earn more points for a Win than for a Loss or OT Loss
  • You’ll also earn bonus points for each Win based on your goal differential (up to +5 goals)
• Goals Scored – Earn points for each goal scored (up to 5 goals)
• Shots For – Earn points for each shot taken (up to 20 shots)

Here’s an example of roughly the points you’ll earn for a 1-0 Win vs. a 2-1 Loss at each difficulty. As you can see, both winning and difficulty have a huge impact on the number of points earned.

	Rookie	Semi-Pro	Professional	All-Star	Superstar
1-0 Win	391	620	819	1,320	1,932
2-1 Loss	180	261	323	428	546

Leaderboards/Rewards

As you play Squad Battles games and earn Battle Points, you’ll be placed in a Weekly Seasonal leaderboard. Leaderboards consist of a Top 100, where the best rewards are earned, along with 12 tiers below.

The threshold to reach each tier is based on a percentage of all Squad Battles players, so this means you can drop ranks if other users start earning more points than you.

The rewards for each tier can be viewed in the ‘My Rank’ tab within Squad Battles, the higher you rank, the better the rewards!

Rank 1
Rank 2-10
Rank 11-20
Rank 21-50
Rank 51-100
Elite 1	Top 3% of users
Elite 2	Top 6% of users
Elite 3	Top 10% of users
Pro 1	Top 20% of users
Pro 2	Top 30% of users
Pro 3	Top 40% of users
Semi-Pro 1	Top 50% of users
Semi-Pro 2	Top 60% of users
Semi-Pro 3	Top 70% of users
Rookie 1	Top 80% of users
Rookie 2	Top 90% of users
Rookie 3	Bottom 10% of users

Monthly Reward Sets & Daily Login Pack

This year we’re tweaking the Monthly Rewards program so you don’t need to login multiple times per day. Rather than receiving a Daily Pack with a Monthly Rewards Collectible every 8 hours, you’ll receive one every 24 hours. This means you can earn 1 Monthly Rewards Collectible each day from the Daily Login pack, plus 1 Monthly Rewards Collectible each day if you complete all Daily Objectives. It should be possible to earn around 60 Monthly Rewards Collectibles each month (starting in October), varying slightly month to month.

Along with this change, we’re giving you a variety of reward options to choose from through Sets, based on how many Monthly Reward Collectibles you’re able to earn in a month. While the Monthly Reward Sets may change from month to month, here are a few examples you may see: Base Pack, Premium Players Pack, or an 83-85 OVR Choice Player Item.

Lastly, in order to give you more choices, and ensure more variety between teams, we’ve removed the single Monthly Reward Legend each month, and will be replacing the top Monthly Reward with an Icons Collectible which can be exchanged through Sets for a Master Icon player (more details below).

Note: This Icons Collectible will be available in Monthly Reward Sets at a reduced in September due to the shorter month with NHL 20 launching on September 13th.

Icons

Master Icons in HUT 20 (known as Legends in HUT 19) will be available through two main avenues: Packs and Sets.

All 64 Master Icons to start the year (OVR 85-91) in can be found in packs in HUT 20. Every pack in the HUT 20 Store will have Pack Probabilities available to view, and when Pack Probabilities list ‘Master Icon Player’, it means that pack has a chance at containing a Master Icon.

Master Icons will also be available through Sets, categorized by player OVR. Simply redeem Icons Collectibles for Master Icons, starting at 1 Collectible for an 85 OVR Master Icon and increasing at each OVR. These Collectibles can be found in Packs that contain non-player items, earned through Monthly Reward Sets, or you can exchange extra Gold players in your collection for an Icons Collectible through Sets. You can also earn Icons Collectibles by completing full sets of Milestone Objectives.

Each Master Icons Set will reward you with a Master Icons Choice Pack for the OVR selected. For example, if you redeem 1 Icons Collectible for an 85 OVR Master Icons Choice Pack, you’ll be able to choose from 1 of 2 85 OVR Master Icons. All Master Icons Sets are untradeable.

 

 

Minor Notes

Player Rarity

• Commons and Rares are no-more! All players are either Gold, Silver, or Bronze, with no additional distinction between Rare or Common. OVR Ranges for each grade remain the same as HUT 19.
  • Gold - 74 and up
  • Silver - 62 to 73
  • Bronze 61 and below
• As there’s no longer Commons or Rares, some pack descriptions may now reference the number of 80+ OVR players guaranteed.
• We’ve also tweaked up the Upgrade Sets to simplify them and accommodate this change.

Position Restrictions

• In HUT 20 you will only be able to put Forwards in Forward positions (LW, C, RW) and Defenceman in Defensive positions (LD, RD) in your even-strength lines.
• You’ll still be able to put any combinations of Forwards and Defence on your Powerplay, Penalty Kill, and OT Lines.
• This change also comes with an additional filter for FWD or DEF, available in the Auction House or Collection search.

Auction House Compare Price

• Select any player in the Auction House, then choose ‘Compare Price’, and the Auction House will filter to just show all other versions of that item available on the market. This should allow you to quickly find the cheapest version of a player before buying.

 

 

Objectives & Milestones

• This year, Event Objectives will be replaced with Weekly Objectives, so you can expect to see these on a more regular basis, even outside of Event periods.
• Milestones this year will reward a variety of different Loan Master Icons to try out and experiment with as you progress through the year. Completing a full Milestone category will reward Icons Collectibles, which can be redeemed for Master Icons in Sets.
• We have also removed Progression Objectives this year to simplify things a bit.

Challenges

• Challenges are now broken into categories based on Difficulty. Within Challenges you’ll find: Rookie, Semi-Pro, Professional, All-Star, and Superstar categories, and of course special Event Challenges released through the year.
• In each category, you’ll find a variety of challenges at the difficulty selected, including some challenges inspired by HUT 19’s All-Star Event Challenges.

Essentials Packs

• There will be just two Essentials Packs in the HUT 20 Store
  • [5000 Coins] Base Pack - 10 Items, at least 3 Players with at least 1 Gold Player.
  • [7,500 Coins] Premium Pack - 10 Items, at least 4 Players with at least 2 Gold Players.

Special Packs

• In addition to the two Essentials Packs, you can expect to see various other packs rotating in and out of the HUT 20 Store at different times throughout the year, such as Player-only Packs and Choice Packs.
• These Special Packs are also used for rewards throughout HUT, so expect to see them as rewards in modes like Squad Battles, HUT Champions, and Competitive Seasons.

Pre-Order Content

Here’s a bit more info on some of the content available in the pre-order offers.

• Hometown Hero (Ultimate & Deluxe Editions) - These players will start the HUT 20 year at 83 OVR, and grow +1 OVR per month until they hit 90 OVR in April, 2020. Select 1 player from any of the 31 NHL teams. We’ve tried to select players from each NHL team that have a bit of an extra connection with their team, whether they’re a local like Troy Stetcher from the Canucks, or a long-term vet like Henrik Lundqvist from the New York Rangers.
• Diamond Player Choice Packs - These packs let you select 10 players over 5 rounds. All players available for selection are 80 OVR or higher

Synergies

• This year you’ll find mostly new Synergies in HUT 20, with a few returning from last year.

Type	Synergy	Boost	Required to Activate
Player	Net Front Presence	+3 to Balance, Hand-Eye, Strength, and Offensive Awareness	5
Player	Hold the Blue Line	+2 to Slap Shot Accuracy, Puck Control, Shot Blocking, and Offensive Awareness	3
Player	X-Factor	+2 to Speed, Agility, Slap Shot Power, and Wrist Shot Power	6
Player	Breakout Master	+3 to Acceleration and Wrist Shot Power	4
Player	Thread the Needle	+3 to Slap Shot Accuracy, Wrist Shot Accuracy, and Passing	4
Player	Do Your Dekes	+3 to Deking, Puck Control, and Agility	4
Player	Arm Day	+2 to Slap Shot Power, Strength, Body Checking, and Defensive Awareness	4
Player	Workhorse	+2 to Speed, Balance, Endurance, and Durability	4
Player	Rock Solid	+3 to Body Checking, Endurance, Discipline, and Durability	5
Player	Magician	+4 to Faceoffs and Stick Checking	4
Team	One-timer Efficiency	+3 to Hand-Eye, Passing, Offensive Awareness, and Slap Shot Power	10
Player	Takeaway Kings	+3 to Defensive Awareness, Stick Checking, Agility, and Aggression	8
Team	Wrecking Crew	+3 to Acceleration, Body Checking, Strength, and Discipline	10
Team	Sustained Pressure	+3 to Speed, Passing, Puck Control, and Durability	10
Team	For the Boys	+3 to Balance, Endurance, Faceoffs, and Shot Blocking	10

LIVE CONTENT

NHL 19 THANK YOU

Firstly, I just want to thank everyone who participated in HUT in NHL 19, we had a ton of fun running all the live events this past year, and took some great learnings from all the feedback from the community. We hope we can closely engage with all of our HUT fans this year and continue our positive momentum from last year.

GOALS FOR NHL 20

Put simply we want to deliver what you (our HUT players) will consider the absolute best year of content in the history of the mode. We hope we can achieve this through:

1. Directly connecting real world results into HUT

We want to connect HUT with real hockey stronger than we ever have, so that following your favourite teams and players can be something you do in HUT right alongside with the real world. We saw some success with this in NHL 19, and feel it’s something we would like to continue in NHL 20 in new and interesting ways.

2. Increased support for European Leagues / Junior Hockey.

We want you to know that if you’re a junior hockey fan, or a hockey fan in Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, or Austria that we intend to increase support for players in your local leagues. We care deeply about giving you more opportunities to build teams using players from your local leagues and favourite teams that you may not have had in the past. Also of note is that this will not impact the quantity or quality of NHL content we release.

3. Brand New Events

On top of delivering new events, we really want to aim to give events more meaning, a sense of purpose, and much stronger hockey theme. We’re hoping our events can drive hockey conversations, debates, and discussions throughout the year - on top of just making team building more interesting than it’s ever been. So for anyone who has played HUT in the past, we’re working very hard to try and deliver a brand new content experience for you this year. And you won’t need to wait as we’ll have a number of new events right out of the gate at launch this year.

4. Restricted Competitive Seasons

Our intent this year is to try and include more restricted competitive seasons, but we also want to be more conscious about communicating what the restrictions will be in advance of the competition so that you can prepare and build squads ahead of time. For those new to the concept, restricted Competitive Seasons allow us to create an in-game tournament, where you might only be allowed to use Bronze players, or only European Born players etc. We feel it’s also another fun way of help giving value to a great variety of items in the game.

CLASSIC NHL

Starting on September 13, we’re launching our very first NHL 20 Event - Classic NHL. This event will put some Classic 90’s hockey stars from the 16-Bit era up against some of today’s top NHL talent - asking you “are you an old school or new school NHL gamer?” when you start building your roster.

As someone who grew up playing 16-Bit NHL (and knowing many others in our community did as well) we wanted to celebrate this era with our first event. 

 

 

 

While we’re not ready to reveal all the Master Items for the event, we do want to mention here that at the start of the event we will give you a Choice Pack with Loan Versions of all the Master Items from the event so everyone will get a chance to try at least one for themselves.

Classic NHL is just the beginning of what we feel will be an extremely fun and exciting year of HUT Content. We want to give confidence to our players that we’re going to continue listening to feedback throughout the year, and that we’re going to deliver a full year of great content from Winter to Summer - and that HUT is THE place to be if you’re a competitive player or team builder.

https://www.ea.com/games/nhl/nhl-20/news/chel-notes-hockey-ultimate-team

[-Vintage Canuck-]

HUT Champions:

 

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NHL® 20 HUT Champions is where the best HUT players compete against each other for awesome prizes. A new season of HUT Champions starts every week and runs from Monday to the following Sunday.

How Can I Participate In HUT Champions?

HUT Champions consists of a qualification period and a Weekend Season. In order to participate in the Weekend Season, a player must earn a Qualification Collectible. To earn a Qualification Collectible, players must do one of the following:

• Win a Division 1 Title in Online Seasons during the qualification period.
• Place as one of the Top 1,500* in one of two qualifiers that are held during the qualification period.
• Place as one of the Top 250 in the previous week's HUT Champions Weekend Season (only applicable to season 2+).

Qualifiers are open to all players who have not already earned and claimed a Qualification Collectible, and occur twice a week:

• Monday to Tuesday
• Wednesday to Thursday

Placing in the top 1,500 earns the player a Qualification Collectible. Please note that the Qualification Collectible is untradeable and has to be in the player’s inbox/collection in order for them to participate in that week's HUT Champions Weekend Season.

Inaugural HUT Champions Season

The first HUT Champions Weekend Season runs from September 20 to September 22. Qualifiers for the first Weekend Season will begin September 16, 2019 and continue on the below dates:

Qualifier 1: Monday, September 16 to Wednesday September 18

• Top 1,500 players qualify

Qualifier 2: Wednesday, September 18 to Friday September 20

• Top 1,500 players qualify

*The ranking needed in the Qualifiers to obtain the Qualification Collectible is subject to change, may vary by weekly competition, and will be communicated in the “More Info” and “Season Prizing” screens in the Competitive Season/Play Online section of the game prior to the start of each weekly competition. If a player does not place high enough, they will not earn a Qualification Collectible.

https://www.ea.com/games/nhl/nhl-20/news/nhl-20-hut-champions

[-Vintage Canuck-]

Pack Probability:

 

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With NHL® 20, Hockey Ultimate Team™ (HUT) gives you more ways than ever to build your fantasy team, so we want to make sure collecting items is a fair and rewarding process with Pack probabilities displayed in game. The goal with showing the probabilities for packs in HUT is to help you make decisions on where you want to invest your Points, Coins, and time.

How Pack Probabilities Work

To see the Pack probabilities, access the HUT Store and select “View Pack Probabilities”, where you'll see percentages on the likelihood of receiving certain categories of items from HUT Packs. Pack probabilities are grouped by overall rating, player item, and item type, as each pack contains a certain number of items that can differ with each opening.

Pack probabilities are built to ensure a guaranteed return for any pack purchase, for instance, a pack might show that you have a 100 percent likelihood of getting a category of Items that’s rated 80 or above. That means it will give you at least one player that’s 80+ rated. Every Pack description in the HUT Store also lists how many items you'll receive in total.

Keys to Remember

The probabilities are on a Pack-by-Pack basis and are not cumulative. That means that each Pack opening is an independent event, and opening multiple of the same pack does not change the likelihood of being awarded a particular Item.

HUT is a live-service game that's constantly evolving, Pack probabilities included. We always have new Programs and Campaigns, which can cause the Pack probabilities to change throughout the year. You will always have the option to check a Pack for the latest probabilities before you buy it through the “View Pack Probabilities” screen. Probabilities are accurate as of the time stamp indicated in that screen.

We want to give you more information to help you decide how you play our game and the rewards you compete for. We're always open to player feedback, and will continue to be with Pack probabilities, as we value player choice and remain committed to ensuring HUT is fun and rewarding for everyone in NHL 20. 

https://www.ea.com/games/nhl/nhl-20/news/nhl-20-pack-probability