EA Sports provided an exciting update for the latest instalment of their hockey video game series, NHL 25, on Monday, announcing that they will be adding real-life coaches to the game, including their unique personalities and team strategies.
However, Rob Williams of Daily Hive posted a screenshot of the in-game rendering of Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet, and let’s just say, they didn’t seem to do him any favours.
The picture was originally posted on Reddit by u/CBennett_12 in the Canucks subreddit with the caption “‘Don’t worry, NHL 25 Rick Tocchet isn’t real, he can’t hurt you’ NHL 25 Rick Tocchet:”, and it couldn’t be a more accurate way to describe the photo. While it’s not a huge stretch to believe that it’s Tocchet, it is missing a couple of key features, particularly lacking more prominence in his goatee and having a bit too much hair.
EA Sports’ NHL department announced that real-life coaches would be added to NHL 25 on Monday as part of their recent patch update to the game. Each coach will come with a specific coaching focus that will benefit certain types of players more than others based on six different categories: offence, defence, power play, penalty kill, teaching, and coach influence. They will also have their records with the team tracked, including any future teams they sign with over the course of a franchise or player career mode.
The feature to hire and fire head, assistant and goalie coaches for your NHL and AHL teams has been a part of the EA NHL franchise for several years now, although until now the options were just randomly generated coaches. Current NHL players could eventually retire and become options for teams to hire as a coach, but there was never an option to hire current coaches.
However, it’s not the first time coach likenesses have been a part of the NHL franchise, as Mike Gould posted in response to the announcement that they existed in NHL 2005. While you couldn’t hire and fire the coaches in the game, their likenesses did exist and could be seen during gameplay, including the coaches Gould posted in this thread on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Let’s see if another patch will be dropping to make Rick Tocchet look more like Rick Tocchet.
Sponsored by bet365