NHL 15 benefits greatly from a complete overhaul in presentation, which the series has sorely needed for years.

Speaking of things remaining the same, no positive changes have been made to either NHL’s Be A Pro or Be A GM mode. The reason I say no positive changes is due to the fact that some features have been removed. For example, you can no longer manually draft players in Be A GM, a key part of your experience with the mode. This makes rebuilding a team more difficult than it would be otherwise. The lack of a manual draft is absolutely baffling in the grand scheme of things; it is something that makes you tilt your head and say “How could they ship the game without this feature that other sports games have possessed since the PS2?”

The General Manager Mode is underdeveloped, as well, missing the ability to draft players manually. The computer will decide for you who to draft every season, making things like scouting or planning your sports franchise's future completely moot. (Another thing EA has promised will be re-added.)

All of the missing modes mentioned above existed as part of NHL 14's launch-day feature set (in fact, these modes all exist in hut 15 coins for Xbox 360 and PS3, though they remain unchanged versus last year's game). It's not unreasonable for sports fans asked to spend $60 at launch to expect feature parity between a year old product and the latest to hit the market, especially since EA identified this as a concern for its Madden and FIFA franchises at the start of the PS4 and Xbox One generation.

For what it's worth, EA's patching some of these missing features back into NHL 15 Ultimate Team Coins. Already added are a playoff mode, coach feedback in Be a Pro, and the three stars of the game (how the latter was ever overlooked, I'll never know). Coming soon are online team play and the aforementioned ability to control the draft in Be a GM. That's the extent of the plans that EA has outlined thus far.

It's all such a shame because at its heart NHL 15 is a very solid hockey game. It just doesn't do any of the non-hockey stuff right. Honestly, newcomers to the franchise might not even notice. But, series veterans would feel incredibly cheated. If nothing else, this is a great foundation for EA Canada to build on as it gets more comfortable developing for Xbox One and PS4.

Again, all of the aforementioned missing features existed in last year's game. (They're also available in NHL 15 PS3 coins and Xbox 360, but they're essentially unchanged from NHL 14.) It seems reasonable for sports fans to expect, at the very least, feature parity with a year-old game — especially since EA managed to make that happen with Madden NFL 25 and FIFA 14 at the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One last fall. It's absolutely inexcusable that, nearly a year later, that's not the case with NHL 15.