The great sport of hockey has never been as popular south of the Canadian border as it is here, and since the lockout, it’s been even worse. While this is tragic for the sport, it has been great for Electronic Arts, whose NHL franchise has been able to go through some major changes without ticking off too many gamers. The culmination of their efforts has turned NHL 09 into an incredible game, worth a look whether you’re a fan of hockey or not.

NHL 09 keeps most of the gameplay mechanics of previous years, subsequently adding some new ones. All of these have their flaws – the lift-stick seems to work too well, the one-handed dekes serve no purpose in anything except the shootout – but imagine flipping the puck behind an opponent’s redline, racing in and fighting for it by lifting his stick and crunching him against the boards, gaining possession, protecting the puck behind the net, passing it out in front, and wiring a one-timer past the goalie. These realistic, yet adrenaline-filled moments happen often in NHL 09, and you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat more often than not.

This year’s edition also adds in “Be A Pro,” an extended feature of the mode in last year’s FIFA title. In “Be A Pro,” your goal is to win the Stanley Cup by taking control of an existing NHL player or goalie, or creating your own character and starting from scratch. If you create your own character, you must start on the third line of an AHL farm team and work your way up, which is a nice touch for fans of the sport. When in control of a goalie, this mode becomes a bit of a chore; if you’re on too low of a difficulty, you become bored for half the game from lack of shots, but play on a higher difficulty and your opponents score on you with ease – the game gives no indication as to what you did wrong. Players, on the other hand, are much more fun to control. It takes a bit of time to get used to playing your position, but once you do you’ll be making plays and shooting pucks like a pro. “Winning the Cup” takes a long time, though, and while your coach gives you goals, it feels like the player progress is arbitrary and very slow. This mode, however, makes you feel the most immersed in the game, as playing with one player feels the most like playing real hockey.

Part of what makes the mode so engaging is the camera angle, situated right behind your player in a 3rd-person-action perspective. This is finally possible thanks to a retuned animation system that makes everything, especially checks, look much more like the real thing. The animations, at times, still look a little choppy, but overall the game does a good job of immersing you with its fluidity. Where the realism takes off, however, are the models and sounds. The jersey textures have been given an overhaul and look much more mesh-like, while the player faces have also been retouched. The sounds are at their finest, with the commentating, for the most part, being extremely spot-on. Coupled with coaches yelling, skates carving, sticks slashing and the crowd roaring, it makes for an engrossing experience. A roommate walked by the TV at one point and commented “If I didn’t see you guys holding controllers, I actually would have thought I was watching and listening to the real thing.”

The online modes are also worth mentioning. This year, along with the standard quick-game, there are also leagues you can choose to play in, both in control of a team, or in control of an individual player with other gamers controlling the other teammates. While I personally don’t have the patience for modes like this, it’s nice to see something new, and something fans have been begging for years to have (though how many will actually make use of it is still to be determined).

NHL 09 succeeds because everything new that it tries works wonderfully, and everything old has been refined. The core game almost comes off as speed-chess: you know the options your opponent has and he knows the ones you have, the question is who will bite. It’s these tense moments, the risk-versus-reward aspects handled in fractions of a second, which truly propel NHL 09 past other sports games. It is the greatest sports game released this generation, and truly one for the hall of fame.