[topfiverecords]

Gave the beta a try playing mostly EASHL and a touch of online vs. Sure was hard to find much difference between 17 & 16. I did find that 17 actually loaded some menus and games a bit faster.

EASHL is nearly the same. The lobby now has a position preselect which will hopefully help game matching, but the lobby is now a mess. Colours and highlights don't make sense and the jersey selection was super glitchy. The lobby still loads, backs out, and then loads again. You'd think that would have been #1 to fix let alone ignoring it completely.

There are now some more position types, like 'hitting scorer'.

Timeouts might be reduced to 1 per game per team from 2. But could just be a beta thing.

Oleksy and Stevens are still super magic CPU defensemen with blind around the net tape to tape passes. They also still zip to the exact spot of a rebound the instant a shot is taken. Irwin still can't get the puck off his stick and loves to trip into the back of the net when no one is near him.

Momentum is still the overriding power and once one team has this mysterious power every bounce and deflection is right back on their stick.

CPU goalies are still almost unbeatable. It's so fun playing a ton of 1-0 games! Because of this it's difficult to get enough players to commit to a game as everyone waits around until there's 2 human goalies (who quit anyway after 1 goal).