Most of the modes of play have been held over from last year. You can still play seasons, tournaments, and playoff runs for the Stanley Cup, or go online for some silky-smooth, lag-free action on the virtual ice with single quick games and whole online leagues. The biggest addition to the roster of game options this year is the Hockey Ultimate Team, where you assemble a club and compete against the CPU or against other players online in the EA Sports UHL. This is something of a convoluted blending of an arcade sports game and a collectible card game, similar to previous modes in Madden and FIFA. You earn EA pucks through success on the ice, and then use this in-game currency to buy packs filled with cards representing players from all over the world, along with consumable cards such as contract extensions, training skill buffs, coaches, arenas, and more. So you set your lineup and then apply training cards to players to buff their skills, contract cards to players to lengthen their time with your club, and so on. Cards can also be traded and put up for auction.

New, sharper controls include greater ability to direct the puck on face-offs, emphasizing how important it is to win draws in real hockey.

Hockey Ultimate Team could well become an obsession, because it's hard to resist the lure of buffing your club constantly through new pack buys. The game is also pretty challenging, since you not only need to build a great team, but also come up with cards to improve player skills and keep your team together and to mix lines up to enhance chemistry. Of course, if you run out of EA pucks earned in-game, you can pony up real cash and buy more. Good packs are pricey, and EA pucks are earned pretty slowly when you're just playing games, so the temptation will be there to break out the credit card and buy your way to a great team.
Another welcome new feature is the addition of the Canadian Hockey League, with all of the teams and rosters from the major juniors. This is arguably most noteworthy in Be a Pro, where you create a player and guide him to NHL stardom, because you can now start off at the junior club of your choice and improve your NHL draft position by playing the Memorial Cup tourney. It's a cool addition, since you can get a real thrill out of helping a fave team like the Peterborough Petes win the Mem Cup. But it has probably got limited appeal, being geared for those hardcore hockey fans who follow the OHL, WHL, or QMJHL. Of course, you can also play full seasons with the CHL teams, just as you could in previous years with clubs from pro leagues. Be a GM mode has been improved this year with tweaks to the AI and the addition of unrestricted and restricted free agents. These changes make for a better management sim, although the CPU still doesn't seem to understand the salary cap. Teams will frequently refuse deals that they flat-out have to make to get under the cap, and the game itself will step in and stop trades in the summer that would result in a club going over the cap, even though teams in the real NHL are allowed to exceed the cap by up to 10 percent in the offseason.
Presentation is just about the same as it was last year. The game looks fantastic on both the 360 and the PS3 (the visuals are slightly better on the 360, due to more jaggies on the PS3, but the difference is minor)--very close to an actual TV broadcast. Players look like their real-life counterparts, animations are dead-on right down to the way that players cruise around and twirl sticks after whistles, and the crowd is appropriately raucous. Clips while waiting for face-offs are a bit annoying, mainly for how they never seem to show the plays you want to see. You'll wait for an instant-replay look at that fantastic scoring chance you just had, only to see something that happened 10 minutes ago or a close-up of the goalie looking up at the clock.

Chicago's dynamic duo rough up an unsuspecting Florida Panther.

Rink audio effects are outstanding, putting you right in the middle of a crowd thrilled at every little thing that happens on the ice. Commentary and color from Gary Thorne and Bill Clement are more up and down, though. They mix up accurate observations about things like goalies stupidly playing the puck in traffic with bizarre raves about odd-man breaks that aren't actually happening. The soundtrack is an equal blend of satisfying and annoying. Fresh tunes from modern bands like Airbourne and Megadeth share space with arena songs that have been assaulting your ears for decades, like The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop," Black Box's "Strike It Up," that "Ole" song that the Montreal Canadiens have been beating to death, and (shudder) Europe's "The Final Countdown." At least you can set up custom soundtracks and ignore the bad stuff.
One of the best things about NHL 11 is how the realism constantly takes you by surprise no matter how long you play. Many arcade sports games reveal more flaws with every hour that you play. Here, the good stuff just keeps coming. Just when the game starts to feel a little predictable, something happens that you've never seen before, like a crazy deflection leading to a goal or an AI player showing off highlight-reel moves. Say hello to the new standard by which hockey games are measured.