EA Sports Ultimate Hockey League announced

The highly anticipated release of NHL11 just got a bit sweeter with the announcement of the EAUHL. After following up on fan feedback and reading a bunch of fanmade wishlists, EA decided it would be best to release an online dynasty mode (of Madden and FIFA fame) for their NHL franchise.

The mode one-ups the wildly successful EASHL, which focused on online team play and allowed multiple people to join a virtual roster and try to become the best team in the EA league. This time around, every user has the ability to be a GM in a single league competing against the rest of the world in monthly sessions. You can now play a game in your dynasty whenever you want with full leaderboards, trophies, and championships.

A lot of the EAUHL was leveraged from the FIFA Ultimate Team technology (trading cards for managing players, auction houses for trades, management screens for chemisty) and allowed the team to focus on the execution of the online dynasty elements. Think of the game mode as a sort of Magic: The Gathering meets NHL and creates a twisted lovechild. Some key parts of the mode include:

• Players – hockey cards are used to represent the players so if you get a Crosby hockey card, it means that Crosby is now part of your franchise (Crosby is extremely rare and tough to get)
• Preseason – the EAUHL preseason is the demo where you will earn card packs in the full version based on how well you do in the demo (demo available mid-August)
• Regular Season – each month has a regular season that ends on the last day of each month (if you win a championship in the previous month, each game will start with a banner raising ceremony for your team showing your opponent that they’re playing against a champion)
• Playoffs – the first couple days of each month will be the playoffs
• Offseason – after playoffs are done, the off-season starts where you can choose to upgrade your team through a Draft Pack of cards or a Free Agent pack
• Salary Cap – to be eligible for league play, your active roster must be below the salary cap however there will also be occasional open tournaments without any cap
• Tournaments – these are like the Olympics or World Championships where you can play in a one-off event with different restrictions (ie. Lower salary cap or no salary cap at all)
• Chemistry – give your players improved attributes by properly matching players together on the same line
• Training Cards – grow your players to their potential and even exceed it if managed correctly
• Potential – this is Central Scouting saying how good they think a player can be (some players will meet their potential and some will exceed or fall short)
• Coach Cards – having the right coach can increase certain attributes of your team
• Contract Cards – sign players to long or short term contracts (I currently have Taylor Hall with an 80 game contract card on him at a salary of 990 which is about half the salary of Crosby)
• Career – each player has a career length. After all of the games in the player’s career have been played, he will retire. Young guys like Tyler Seguin have careers over 140 games long whereas older guys like Bill Guerin have a career length around 40 games.
• Trading – trading can be done through the auction house where you can find all players that have been deemed expendable by their GM’s. Just like a real GM, you can put players on the trading block and go after players that you want/need if the price is right. This is a great way to create build your entire home town team.
• Fatigue – you’re going to need four solid lines and 3 pairs of D to be successful as fatigue forces you to use all of your players (there’s nothing like having a 6?6? defensemen and crushing guys with the new Real Time Physics Engine…hit a guy from behind, it’s worth the penalty!!)
• Customize team – you can get arena cards that determine what arena you play in; logo cards to set as your team logo; home and away uniform cards to customize the look of your team on the ice and you can also name your team and give it an abbreviation

EA Canada had a live chat on August 12th, and has an in-depth blog on the creation of the mode as well. NHL 11 is due to release in North America on September 7.