Edmonton Oilers: NHL 16 Player Ratings
By Kris Hansen
NHL 16 is around the corner with the release date being on September 15th. I’ve already have the game ready on game day and EA Access has a special ten hour game play release for those who are subscribed to the service on this Thursday September 10th.
Earlier on the summer I gave my thoughts on the NHL 16 beta and also gave my projections for the teams line ups. Below will be each section with the numbers in the brackets being my prediction, while the bolded numbers are the actual player overall.
I found these projections on YouTube via some YouTubers who were invited for a pre release. I will also give my comments for each grouping. I’ve also provided the two videos for skaters and goalies where I got the ratings from. For some, there are an NA because I did not catch their ratings. For McDavid, I found a photo from a early stream that had his overall.
Forwards
Hall 90 (88)- Nugent-Hopkins 85 (87)- Eberle 87 (87)
Pouliot 83 (83) – McDavid 83 (82)- Purcell 83 (83)
Korpikoski 83 (82)- Letestu 81 (81)- Yakupov 84 (82)
Hendricks 82 (79)-Lander 79 (79)- Pitlick 75 (77)
Klinkhammer 79 (77)
Draisaitl NA (77)
Comments
Hey! I actually got some right, nearly getting the second line bang on. Yakupov got some love for sure being two overall higher than I thought and projects to be the second highest Right Wing behind Eberle, as he should be. Purcell and Pouliot are 83s. Hall remains at 90 despite an off season and he’s the third highest ranked Left Winger in the game.
Too High
Hendricks has a 3 point increase over my prediction. He would be ranked as the third highest center on the Oilers with one overall behind McDavid and ranked higher than Letestu. That’s pretty impressive for a guy who scored 16 total points last year. I love Hendricks as a player but 82 is far too high for a fourth line guy.
Too Low
Nugent-Hopkins actually got decreased by one overall. Why EA? He only played some of the most minutes among forwards in the NHL, matched his 56 points from last season in less games played and is becoming quite good defensively. I’d understand if he was the same overall but a decrease was unnecessary.
Defensemen
Klefbom 83 (82)-Schultz 84(81)
Reinhart 78 (79)- Gryba 81 (78)
Scratches/Callups: Ference 82 (80),Nikitin 83 (80),Nurse NA (78)
Comments
Man, these are some weird projections. It’s not like Madden where I feel like EA for the most part gets it right. Unlike the Fowards, there are quite a bit of players who are ranked too high. It’s great seeing Klefbom being 83 overall, up from 78 overall from NHL 15. That’s a nice 5 point increase. Fayne remains 82 and there’s nothing wrong with that. Not too surprised with Sekera dropping slightly from last year: he did not match his career best totals and was injured.
Too High:
Take your pick here: EA has always been way too generous to Justin Schultz. Seriously last year in my Be a GM the guy would top 89-90 overall. At this point however, 84 overall is too high for Schultz. Or how about Andrew Ference who is projected to be the 7th man?
No the highest one goes to Nikitin who actually went up an overall. Yes, despite his injuries and bad play, EA rewards Nikitin with an increase in overall. Mind boggling.
Goaltenders
Talbot 83(83)
Scrivens 84(81)
Nilsson NA (79)
Comments
Oh boy EA. This is pretty awful. Scrivens had a really poor season last year and yet his overall remains untouched. Likewise, Talbot put up his strongest year as an NHL goalie and he remains 83 overall. In the YouTube video I watched, it’s laughable that Scrivens potential is a yellow starter while Talbot is a green “fringe” starter.
I’m flabbergasted by that. Yeah, I’m really high on Talbot but cmon EA. He’s not going to be backing up Ben Scrivens this year barring a miracle.
Conclusion
I’m really excited for this years edition of NHL 16. I’m even more excited that the edit players feature is back and supposedly better (with the ability to adjust contracts, which is a first in the series). It’s needed, because some of these overalls are a tad off. I feel like Nugent-Hopkins was not given enough love while guys like Nikitin and Ference are ranked way too high for what they did last year.
EA does some weird decisions for overalls. Oh well, happy editing!