I should confess I haven’t played an EA NHL game since NHL 09, which is odd for me as I played just about every iteration of that series religiously prior to that. Instead, I dabble with some SNES NHL 94 now and again. There is nothing wrong with the recent EA games, but I find myself more often than not dreaming up other hockey video games I’d rather play. And here they are:

1. Stylus-based hockey game for the Nintendo DS/3DS. If I could open a bank account in the U.S.A. this would be my Kickstarter project. Basically you do all your passing and shooting with the stylus, and you’d control the player with the D-pad or thumbstick. You’d swap players automatically or hit the bumper button to do so.

Passing and shooting would be drag and release motions with the stylus. You could execute some fancy dekes within your puck range (the blue circle on the bottom screen), or try to intercept passes with an active stick. One interesting play mechanic is fighting for the puck in the corners with the opponent, or trying to fish the puck out from a scrum.

The top screen layout would be friendlier to the NES Ice Hockey/Blades Of Steel side-to-side play, rather than the EA NHL 16-bit games which had an up-and-down orientation.

This game would also be ideal for the Wii U, which also has a stylus.

2. Lego Hockey. This game would be a traditional hockey game like the EA NHL series, but the players (minifigs) would explode into several pieces when hit. There would also be a powerup system where you strategically build brick walls to aid your team/fluster the opponent. Read more about it here.

3. Nintendo Ice Hockey 2. Another game I touched on before, however this could be done in the style of the stylus game I mentioned above. One thing that I would like to add is that when a fight occurs, it would launch into a Smash Bros. style of game.

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I was going to say an iPad table hockey game, but that was attempted with mixed results.