NHL 26 review roundup: Be A Pro mode the lone bright spot

Sep 19, 2025, 03:56 PM ET

With FC, Madden NFL and College Football getting all the attention — and making bank — EA NHL 26 has felt overshadowed by its peers. This stagnation from iteration to iteration has been a festering wound for the community — one EA hoped to fix with NHL 26 and its reworks of the Be A Pro mode.

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This attempt at course correction has seen mixed results, as far as a look at the game’s reviews is concerned.

NHL 26 has reached a critics score of 74 out of 100 at score aggregation site Metacritic based on 20 professional reviews conducted on PS5. Rival site Opencritic shows 73/100 with 27 reviews across platforms being considered, though not even half of the critics listed on the site would actually recommend the game to their readers.

The score itself is halfway decent and shows that critics have recognized the developer’s efforts to make improvements. The Be A Pro mode is generally considered the game’s crown jewel due to the changes implemented in NHL 26, thoroughly fixing weaknesses in previous versions and showing actual innovation.

However, the consensus among critics is that the Be A Pro changes alone are not enough to truly turn around the franchise’s fortune, as the rest of the game shows precious little innovation compared to past years. While real-life data integration brings NHL 26 in line with its peers from the worlds of football and soccer, helping steer its gameplay into a more authentic direction, the game’s other modes have remained stagnant, dragging down the online experience.

NHL 26 seems to be a start into the right direction, at least. With Be A Pro being a unanimous hit, the developers finally have a solid foundation and guiding light to work with.