NHL 08
Played the NHL 08 demo this past week on the resurrected office XBox 360. I was very impressed. Graphics and sound were eye-poppingly good. I hadn’t played NHL 07 so the control scheme was new to me, but I found it to be very intuitive. The puck mechanics feel very realistic, and thankfully the checking is closer to reality, with fewer of the explosive checks that seemed to come so easily in previous years.
The Kings are already two games into their exhibition season (they started camp/exhibitions early because they’re off to London to start the season in October). They recently split a home-and-home against the Ducks. It’s nice to hear that they might actually have a proper second line with Handzus centering Nagy and O’Sullivan. That’ll take some pressure off Kopitar/Cammalleri and Frolov. That does leave Dustin Brown on the third line, however, and I was thinking late last season that he was just starting to put some scoring touch to his hard-hitting game. Hopefully he won’t regress in that area playing with guys like Armstrong and Calder.
I ended up getting the Supreme One90 gloves (I probably should’ve stayed away from nikebauer.com, they make the One90s sound like I’ll suddenly turn into Dany Heatley) and the Intake helmet; both should arrive in time to get broken in at this Wednesday’s clinic.
