EA is poised to take to the ice again with this year’s hockey sim NHL 21. While the game itself will slide out on October 16, we have the known changes and fixes coming on launch day! The NHL 21 day one update patch notes are listed below, and they’re beefy!

UPDATE: If you’re looking for today’s NHL 21 patch (October 20), head on over here for the notes!

Note that the patch notes were extracted from the PS4 version of the title.

NHL 21 Day One Update Patch Notes:

Gameplay
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General
– Penalty shot logic improvements

Physics
– Fixed various cases where hugs and pairups were not exiting properly
– Stick height tuning for various player heights for the lacrosse move

Goalies
– Additional save animations for set, butterfly and spread V
– Animation improvements to the old school stand up goalie stances
– Various upper body puck tracking improvements
– Improvements to spread V locomotion and save selection
– Improved responsivness to attempt new covers when a puck is deflected or has already hit the goalie
– Various other user goalie cover improvements
– Improved AI goalie behavior to fake and lacrosse dekes
– Various user goalie right stick responsiveness and consistency improvements
– Fixed a case where goalies would get stuck in a sweep animation when hit by another player
– AI goalie tuning around 5 hole shots
– Improved AI goalie ability on long unscreened shots that were scoring too often
– Fixed cases where goalies were unable to abort out of long covers if the puck gets deflected or picked up leaving them vulnerable
– Improvements to AI post play behavior to defend against wraparounds

Skating
– Various stick blending improvements when tranistioning between skating styles
– Various offplay skating improvements
– Fixed cases where players were pivoting the wrong direction while coming out of a pickup

Shooting
– Fixed a case where one-timers would aim at the ice if a pickup was requested at the same time as a shot
– Fixed a case where spin shots were playing in unintended situations
– Fixed cases where the puck would frequently collide with the players skate while performing a between the legs one-timers
– Improved cases where one-timers were not triggering when intended
– Various shot release point fixes

Pickups
– Various pickup animation improvements
– Various pickup improvements for picking up pucks around the crease, goalie and goal line
– Logic on the offensive side is intended to prevent pickups that pull the puck back from the goal line when a tap in is all that is wanted
– Logic on the defensive side is to help the defensive player pick up pucks on/around the goal line to avoid weak own goals
– Reduced the distance for successful skate pickups around the net to reduce kicked in goals offensively and defensively
– Fixed cases when picking up pucks while backskating would sometimes pivot players unintentionally
– Various glove pickup fixes
– Fixed some pickup animations where taller players would unintentionally miss the puck
– Improved bat-down collisions that were missing pucks that should have been knocked down

Passing
– Animation improvements when passing out of a backhand toe drag
– Fixed some cases where passes out of boardplay were not respecting the requested direction

Stick Checking
– Fixed a case where players were getting unintended trips while blending out of a poke check or DSS
– Fixed a case where stick on stick collisions were not forcing the puck carrier to drop the puck
– Fixed some cases where players were getting tripped unintentionally from the front
– Various poke check accuracy improvements

AI
– Improved teammate support when in boardplay
– Fixed cases in  3 on 3 breakouts and rush plays where the defender was too aggressive on more conservative strategies (Standard and Passive)
– Improved cases where strong side wingers during breakouts either left too early or did not support the puck carrier
– Improvements to AI defenders that were getting stuck in gap control for too long
– Improved various cases where AI defenders were getting caught flat footed on the rush
– Various additional rush defense AI and gap control improvements
– Improved F1 logic where they were overcommiting to the weak side in the 1-2-2 neutral zone strategies
– Fixed some cases where AI puck carriers would back track with the puck into their own zone
– Fixed some cases where players stopping near the blueline were getting pushed offside by AI players
– Improvements to AI dump retrieval logic
– Improved some cases where weak side defenders would abandon positioning goal side to pressure the puck carrier

Presentation
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– Fixed an issue where the camera would shake when set to zone for both goalie and BAP online camera in EASHL

World of CHEL
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General
– Pre-match lobby now show new match ping threshold ranges
– EASHL Club Finals pre-match lobby now blocks opponent Club Name, Online ID, and Player Prestige Level
– EASHL Club Finals games now count as soon as players start to load into the game instead of at puck drop.
– Drop-in Team names have been changed to the Nighthawks and Ice Breakers to align with the new casual clothing colors and add easier team/player recognition.
– 23 Ai Players have been replaced with new identities, including the 2 starting goalies in Threes Eliminator, EAHSL Drop-in & EASHL Clubs.
– Added additional content into WoC for upcoming Chel challenges. Check back often to collect the latest cool new content.

Fixes
– Updated the Threes / Ones Eliminator Player Progression bar in the post-game to match the game mode colors
– Fixed alignment issues with Player Rank Badges in Intro/Outro overlays
– Fixed the grouping of unlocked traits in the Post-Game
– Fixed an issue with Playoff beards where the correct length wasn’t being used for Club Finals games.
– Fixed an issue where your previous placement animation would continually be displaying after the season stat had moved on to the Auditing Leaderboards phase
– Fixed an issue where Player Rank Badges were displaying the incorrect rank within the leaderboards
– Fixed an issue where Player Rank Badges were not appearing in Post-Game player summary screen
– Fixed an issues where your settings would be reset if the user entered Free Skate

HUT
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HUT Challenges
– Added Retry option to Pause Menu for Solo Challenges