How to Succeed in NHL11 Hockey Ultimate Team

Hey there hockey fans, it’s that time of year again. The latest and greatest video game hockey franchise has come out, EA Sport’s NHL11. After the summer long hockey drought I’m sure you’re all jumping at the bit to lace up those virtual skates and score those pixilated goals.  Well, you’re in luck. NHL11 offers a variety of ways for you to play your favorite game and control the benches of your favorite teams.

Every year EA puts out a new NHL game and every year they pile on a few more features and make a few more tweaks to the overall experience. This year’s version brings broken sticks, close call goals, user generated score celebrations, a brand new physics engine, an updated faceoff circle mechanic, and a brand new game mode: the Hockey Ultimate Team.

If you’ve always been a fan of fantasy drafts, personalized rosters, or collecting hockey cards, you’re going to love the Hockey Ultimate Team. The mode differs from all of the others by having you collect the players on your roster by purchasing virtual playing card packs with EA Pucks or actual cash. To build a powerful line up to out play your opponents online or in the single player tournaments you’re going to have to work your way up from practically nothing.

One of the greatest advantages to the HUT game mode is that you have the ability to pit a purely customized hockey team against your peers online. In the “Create a Team” game modes of old you were forced to pit your players against the AI opponents or against people playing with you physically in the room. HUT changes all of that because it allows you to create a customized team with players, logos, and jerseys, and find games through the HUT online match making system.

If you want to succeed in NHL11’s Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) you’re going to have to play a lot of games and make wise decisions with your hard earned EA Pucks. 

In Hockey Ultimate Team it’s all about the amount of EA Pucks you can make and how you spend them. EA Pucks are used to purchase player cards and consumables and they can be earned in two ways: you can pay real money for them or you can play more hockey games with your teams.

The problem is, you can only earn a certain amount of pucks per game and every game deducts “career points” from all of the players used in your roster. If you want to build up enough pucks to get your hands on those superstar players of your dreams you’re going to have to do some clever time management.

There are 3 basic card types that you must work with to build your desired roster.  There are a few other card types but they aren’t as necessary to understand and manipulate. The most important cards are player cards, contract cards, and training cards. Player cards can be placed into your active roster or stored in your collection for later use and they are assigned stats like any good hockey player would have. You can augment your player cards by applying contract cards and training cards to them.

Every player card has a total number of career points available to them. Every game they play subtracts a career point from the card and when they have 0 points left they can no longer be used on your active roster. Coinciding with the career points are the contract points. The contract points work the same way as the career points but the players have less of them and they can be replenished with contract cards.

The idea is that you will never be able to hold onto the same roster forever. The more games you play the more contract cards you need to apply and the more players you will need to replace. It becomes a constant ebb and flow and it can be extremely difficult to keep your best players around.

The HUT game mode is a new and challenging take on the “create a team” mode. The trick is to build up your roster carefully so that you don’t lose the best players too fast and your team steadily improves. 

First off let me say that this strategy is for those out there who want to play this game mode for FREE. That means, you never have to purchase a game pack using real money and won’t participate in any of the micro transactions available in the HUT mode. Unfortunately, you’re going to be setting yourself up at a disadvantage when playing online initially because of this. There are tons of people out there with abundant disposable income and no patience and they’re going to buy hundreds of game packs and fill their rosters with the best and rarest cards imaginable.

Believe me, you don’t have to buy card packs to succeed in NHL11’s HUT game mode. You just have to have a little patience and a little perseverance.

With that said, let’s get into the strategy.

3 Concepts for Success in NHL11 HUT:

1. Have a Goal in Mind for Your Team:

It’s important that you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your team. My goal going in was to win all of the online tournaments. That’s no easy feat but eventually, with some hard work, I think it’s possible. You have to figure out what you’re willing to play for. If you don’t want to put your HUT team up against other people’s HUT teams, you probably should just play the regular game modes.

2. Good Team Chemistry is Essential to Success:

While you’re putting together your roster you will notice that every line has “Chemistry.” A line’s chemistry improves the skill of all the players on that line. If you want to make great lines with mediocre players you can use chemistry to your advantage.

You can improve the chemistry of your lines by putting players in their proper positions, matching players from the same league, and matching players who play on the same team.

3. Don’t Play Online Until You’re Ready:

Before you have a 4 star hockey team you’re going to have a real problem playing against other HUT teams online. Too many players are purchasing card packs with real money and augmenting their lines. If you’re not willing to sink that low to play a video game, you’re at a slight disadvantage. If you must play online, be prepared for some really tough wins.

So, here’s what you do:

The slow and steady method makes heavy use of line chemistry and the card auction house. The idea is to put together a pretty decent team to play in the single player tournaments and save up pucks for strong NHL lines that sit in your collection until you’re ready to play online.

When you start your HUT team you get an initial roster card pack and no EA Pucks. You should first improve your lines by placing players in their proper position and matching similar leagues. Once you’ve done that you can enter your first single player tournament. You better get used to these, you’ll play a lot of them.

For each game you play in HUT mode you can earn an average of 400 EA Pucks. If you win tournaments you get an EA Puck bonus as well. Play in tournaments that have a Puck bonus of over 1,000 and make sure you can win them. Save up enough money to buy a standard card pack and improve your lines once again. This is the last card pack you really need to buy.

Keep playing single player tournaments to earn pucks and apply contract cards when necessary. You want to save all of your training cards for your future NHL stars, so don’t spend them. When you’ve got a thousand pucks or so, it’s time to start filling your lines with decent players that give you the best chemistry. You can use the auction house to buy most players for less than 300 pucks.

All you have to do is pick the best player on a line, figure out what league he’s on and figure out what team he’s on, and then find players of equal or greater skill who play on the same team as him and put them in the proper positions. Try and buy players with 70 Overall Skill, 75+ Potential, and 80+ games in their Career. If you can’t find any that fit the bill on the auction house, pick a different player from your roster and find his teammates instead.

If you do it right you will have a full roster of non-NHL players with a team chemistry of 90+ and all of your players will be of the 70+ skill variety. Now you’ve got a team to be proud of and it’s time to start saving up your pucks for those NHL stars.

Continue to play the single player tournaments to earn pucks and purchase peewee packs every now and then to replenish your contract cards and maybe collect a few rare cards. Remember to save up any of those training cards you get. It’s time to go shopping for the NHL players you like.

Use the same concept of filling a line with players from the same team and keep your chemistry up. Try to purchase NHL stars with 80+ skill and as many career points as possible. You'll probably end up spending about 2,000 EA Pucks per player, even more if you hunt down players like Ovechkin, Horton, Crosby, or Kane. It's going to take a lot of single player tournament wins to fill the entire roster with powerful NHL lines, but it'll be worth it.

Don’t add your NHL lines to your roster until you can fill the entire team with them. If you use your NHL lines too early they’re going to run out of career points and you’re team won’t last long enough to make a run in those online tournaments. The idea is to use your non-NHL lines to collect EA Pucks and use your NHL lines purely for the online tournaments.

Once you’ve got a full roster of NHL stars from various teams, go ahead and apply all of the training cards you’ve picked up and enter a few online tournaments. You should have at least a 4 star team, if not a 5 star one, and you should do well even against some of the guys who purchased pucks with real money.

Remember, it’s a video game. Don’t let it eat your life. Have fun, and good luck.