On Thursday, EA Sports released its overall ratings for Eastern Conference teams and players for the upcoming NHL 13 video game. Taking a look at the Winnipeg Jets, a lot of players ended up with lower overall ratings than they had in the first roster version of NHL 12.
Overall ratings in video games have always been a little weird and confusing, especially when EA Sports messes with the categories and criteria every year. What’s different about this year’s game is that the overall team ratings are broken up into offense, defense and goaltending which are rated on a scale of one to five, with half-numbers being included. In NHL 12, those categories were rated with numbers on a scale of 1 to 100. Taking those changes in mind, it seems that EA lowered a lot of players’ ratings in accordance with the new overall team ranking system, with exceptions to star players like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin and Pavel Datsyuk. So we should try to keep that in mind when looking at some of the lowered ratings for Jets players in NHL 13.
The Jets’ top rated player is Dustin Byfuglien, whose 87 overall is the same as in last year’s game.
The next best two are Evander Kane (+1) and Zach Bogosian (+1) who check in at 84.
Andrew Ladd (-2), Blake Wheeler (no change) and Ron Hainsey (+1) are rated 83 overall, followed by Ondrej Pavelec (-2), Bryan Little (-1) and Olli Jokinen scoring 82s.
At first glance these ratings seem fair, even though Ladd came off of a pretty good statistical season and Ondrej Pavelec’s inconsistency probably didn’t deserve a two-point drop in the ratings. Both players probably should probably have the same ratings as they did in NHL 12.
Nikolai Antropov has the most notable, but probably deserved drop-off, going from an 85 to an 81. He was pretty inconsistent last season and shouldn’t default as the Jets’ top center.
But wait, what’s missing here? Oh yeah Tobias Enstrom! His rating: a measly 81. I know that it’s only a video game rating, but to me it makes no sense. You could make an argument that Enstrom is more talented and is a more valuable player than Dustin Byfuglien. If Enstrom’s 84 overall in NHL 12 was a little low, 81 is a joke. This is a guy who puts up 50 points per season on a consistent basis. Do the dudes at EA not pay attention?
At the end of the day this doesn’t matter a whole lot, but for EA Sports NHL fans who use the Jets, it’ll just be a little more challenging when you play as your favorite team.
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