FULL BROADCAST AND REPORT OF A NHL 2004 season game LA KINGS-COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS
1st period: Quick PP goal by Armstrong from a perfect assist by Anze Kopitar. Pretty tight defensive play all through the period and lots of blocked shots.
WATCH THE FULL 1st PERIOD BROADCAST
(Watch by clicking the > icon in the middle of the stream window, just like YouTube)
2nd period: Preissing plays softly behind the net and Nash gets a great assist from Fredrik Modin. The game is tied 1-1.
A bit later... again soft plays by O'Donnell and Zeiler in the defensive zone, then LaBarbera lets out an easy rebound and Malhotra punishes immediately.
The 1-3 goal comes from a terrible mistake by defenseman Kyle Quincey. He loses the puck in the defensive zone to Andrew Murray and BJ Umberger thanks and capitalizes. The coach should bench Quincey for that. :D
WATCH THE FULL 2nd PERIOD BROADCAST
3rd period: Hit of the game at 00:10: Ole Kristian Tollefsen's huge open ice hit stuns Ladislav Nagy in the neutral zone. Pretty good powerplay efforts but LeClaire keeps his cool.
Time to change the strategy to all out attack. This makes the d-men play more offensively and allows more breakaways to your opponent (as you can see from the video CBJ had quite a few). Finally Frolov's (a bit lucky) backhander cuts the lead to 2-3.
My super heavyweight, all 6'3 and 265 pounds of this gigantic man, Raitis Ivanans, with the toughness rating of '92 decides to spark the team. Since CBJ's heavyweight Jared Boll was hiding all through the game Ivanans decides to drop 'em with Ole-Kristian Tollefsen who has played borderline dirty and had an assist + 4 shots on goal... maybe bit of a "payback" from Tollefsen's earlier hit as well? :P A fight Ivanans should have won easily against much smaller middleweight. Well it's a draw... what an uninspiring effort by Raitis. Come back Stu Grimson! :D
Besides my underperforming future superstar d-man, Drew Doughty, who's shot hit the poles, I couldn't get much of anything going, plus LeClaire plays an awesome game. Finally CBJ scores an empty net goal and takes the win 2-4.
WATCH THE FULL 3rd PERIOD BROADCAST
Here's the stats page. I wish we could save the stats page at the end of the game and archive your own complete individual season game stats. Egorgiy (spell?) has made such program (Gameplay Center) for newer EA titles. It's designed for online play but works as a stats archiver too. Brian's stats exporter gets the G-A-Shots/+- Box Score out for each season game though... rest I did manually. Thanks to Brian (who I talked just recently) for this great addon.
What makes this game special you ask? Well... just look at the flow... the stats, everything. Cpu got the 1-2 and 1-3 goals from my own mistakes... soft plays, terrible giveaways. I never have a feeling that cpu cheats in 2004... it just outplays me. This time I allowed way too many shots (36). To win you should be tighter defensive play and keep the cpu shooting below 30.
This was a typical season game of mine... nothing special in that sense... I get games like this all the time. This broadcast draws a good picture how my games are like. I'm not a great player so it could be one reason why the games are so edgy, tight and close all the time. This time I played rather well... minus those two silly mistakes... AI made me to pay the full price for them.
This season with the Kings must be my 10th full one with NHL 2004 and I never get tired of it. It has remained extremely challenging and addictive, no matter what team I'm playing with. I really believe in the AI and gameplay changes we have done with Randy and other guys... scoring, penalties, fights... all is in great balance. The slower game pace makes it way more realistic and makes things like board play and shot blocking much easier.
Thanks for watching... and I hope you enjoyed the broadcast. Today and yesterday I had too much time on my hands (have a terrible flu can can't go to work). These videos have been a lot of fun to make.
Thanks again to all addon makers who makes playing this game possible... in such high level. This is the best ever hockey game to me.
PS: I know Nagy is in KHL now. He's just still in my season roster. And I noticed that CBJ's Andy Murray's PBP is wrong. Both are fixed already.
Also note that enforcers (Boll and Ivanans) have been made centers, because the AI uses auto fill lines during the season. With proper overall rating and C position the cpu keeps them in the 4th line wing (the correct place for the enforcers). If you make them wingers, cpu places them in the 3rd, and even in 2nd and 1st line during the season, to replace the injured players. CPU uses "auto fill lines" continuously through the season.
Linear Mode
