• Defensive Skill Stick - NHL 08 gave you true offensive prowess with the Skill Stick, and this year, you have the power to stop it. Block passing lanes with 360° control of your stick or kill an opponent's one timer game by lifting their stick just before they receive a pass
• Be A Pro - A dynamic 3rd person camera puts you in the role of one player on a team. The Performance Tracker will rate your play in over 50 categories, to make sure you know what parts of your game need to improve. Start your career off in the ranks of the AHL and become one of the best in the NHL. Your very own hockey card will mark your progress, from your rookie beginnings to a potentially legendary ending
• Create-A-Play Breakouts - create a winning strategy in both online and offline play. Make breakout plays from your own zone or set up behind your net and tell your right winger to look for the flip dump from the defenseman
• NHL 94 Controls - Hit, pass, shoot, and score using the simplified two-button control system featured in NHL 94. So even if you're new to the game, you can challenge the best of the best
• One-handed Dekes - When you are skating in on a breakaway, tap the puck to one hand and tuck the puck behind a sprawling goalie for the ultimate finish

Become the first great name in videogame hockey with NHL 09. Jump into the EA SPORTS Hockey League and become part of the first console sports MMO. Take your created player online and join a team with friends, or scout for players. Featuring 6 vs. 6 online team play, the ability to level up your player, tournament brackets, and awards at the end of every season.

Check Hard and Fight - A physics-based checking and fighting engine featuring more than 300 new animations brings a higher-level of intensity to the game

This is a fun game in many ways, but with some very frustrating drawback. EA Sports has been producing this game for 17 years now and they have received the same criticism for all those years - still they seem unable to do anything about it.

Here goes:
1. As in every other NHL-game in this series, the AI is very bad. Even if you play at the most advanced level, you will very soon dominate the game completely.
2. The goaltenders are just as pathetic as ever. To compensate for not being able to create a decent AI that could make the game challenging, EA Sports insteade made the CPU goaltender almost impossible to score against while your own goalie will drop in almost every puck.

The consequence of these two drawbacks are simple. You'll dominate each and every game completely, but you'll still loose. Be prepared for you shooting 70 shots and scoring 1 goal while the CPU will shoot 3 shots and score 2 goals. The result is that the games in NHL09 don't resemble real hockey games.

All in all, this is a fun game if you play agains friend (and these days it's the only thing I use it to do) but totally useless if you want to play against the computer as EA Sports hasn't been able to develop an AI that would produce realistic games despite 17 years of experience. It would be time for them to stop putting out almost the same game year after year and start focusing on getting the game to work instead.

This is the worst game I have ever played!!! If you dont mind the computer dictating the game for you go ahead and purchase it

The Game is awesome and the new be a pro section lets you start at 18 in the AHL and then pursue your career into the NHL.

Let me begin by saying, the graphics and sounds are all great. The be-a-pro-mode is also really fun, and I still like the dynasty mode. But that's where it ends.

The gameplay, nuts and bolts, are simply terrible. Let's begin with the skating, physics there seem to be fine. Even realistic, but this is where the realism ends. The physics of the puck are totally befuddling. Blocked shots gain speed and seem to always go to open cpu players. The netminders are omnipotent and your shooters will be terrible.

After updating to version 1, I found the only way to score is wrap arounds and half wraps. Why do wide open one-timers from 10 feet away, in the slot, not work anymore? So many easy shots are up out of play or completely wide. So many passes are missed or intercepted, for no clear reason.

Your teammates AI is very poor on offense and disappointing on defense. Don't ever expect your mates to make smart plays. They prefer to just take penalties and run into each other, or skate around randomly.

The CPU goalie is fantastic, constantly making stunning saves, while your goalie lets in 50 foot backhand goals. The CPU scores on one-timer rebounds while the goalie is in position, you will fail to score on a rebound with a half open net constantly.

The online play is also very poor. The lag is simply awful, especially on slap shots. They literally turn into lobbed slow-pitch softballs some of the time. The passes and skating also experience unusual slowdowns and the goalies glitch/freeze sometimes. I figured at least the online play would be fun.

I've owned every NHL game since 1993, with 1 exception, NHL 06, and this is arguably the worst of all. The puck behaves very unusually, the goalies are too inconsistent, the shooters can't find the net and the AI is entirely random. I am very unhappy I wasted $60 on this game.

Lots of fun. Similar to NHL 08 but with better graphics, and more realistic movements. Overall great game, i recommend it.