Yeah, I’m a little late here, but I say that’s partly on the NHL 20 team for undermining their coolest event of the year — Dynamic Duos — with this Team of the Week. Plus, there was that whole patch thing that sort of sidetracked us as well since we’ve been digging into that.
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You saw that correctly.
That is a 92 Overall Alexander Ovechkin and he's available now alongside of the #NHL20 Team of the Week. pic.twitter.com/y4yyBZigdQ
— EA SPORTS NHL (@EASPORTSNHL) December 4, 2019
But there it is. It’s not a bad Team of the Week by any means, it just cheapens the Dynamic Duos grind, and also makes it clearer than ever that we are going to be so inundated with some versions of these cards that fatigue has to set in at some point. How many times can you pop for new Ovechkin cards before you finally say, “I think I’m good with the version I got”?
This Ovechkin card is exactly the same as the one from the Dynamic Duos event, except for a couple factors. This version of the card has 95 offensive awareness, and the Dynamic Duos version has 99 offensive awareness. The synergies are the other aspect that are different. It’s 1 to SP and 1 to RS with TOTW Ovechkin, while the Dynamic Duos is 2 to 1T, 2 to CP and 1 to TN. One other aspect that is different is the Dynamic Duos card does get even “better” when tagged up with the Backstrom card from the event. (This same conceit applies to the other duplicates in this Team of the Week.)
Still, these are mostly window dressing differences. Synergies do matter, and 99 offensive awareness does help for when the AI has control of Ovechkin, but either way this is arguably the best card in the game behind the Dynamic Duos version now — at worst, Ovechkin now has both the best LW cards in HUT.
Pastrnak is next up, and he was the star of the second set of Dyamic Duos released. No, he wasn’t one of the “masters” of the set, but he was the best card released below the masters. This is even more awkward than the Ovechkin in that this Pastrnak card is the exact same as the Dynamic Duos one except for the synergies. This version is 1 to NP and 1 to M. With the Dynamic Duos version, it’s 2 to TK and 2 to DK. Again, great card, but it’s almost essentially a duplicate.
Karlsson is next up on the duplicates list. Here is the first time where the TOTW card is at least somewhat different from the Dynamic Duos card. This Karlsson is only a 91 overall, while the Dynamic Duos version is a 92 overall. This version also has downgraded overall speed, a slightly worse shot, and overall basically subtract -1 from every rating and that’s how this one differs from the DD one. The synergies are also different. With TOTW, you get 1 to AD and 1 to M. With the DD version, you get 2 to WC, 2 to HT and 1 to WM.
Guentzel is an actual non-duplicate, but he is not really a center. He has 74 faceoffs, so he mostly has to get booted out of the faceoff circle. Be that as it may, he fits the role of an offense-first mid-tier player who has decent body checking and stick checking. I don’t want him out there on the penalty kill or anything, and he’s a little below top tier in speed, but he’s perfectly usable.
The tricky thing about Tavares cards is he’s always a little slow for his overall rating. It’s a little tricky to get Tavares to come off as awesome as he is in real life in these NHL games, but he does have a good faceoff rating and a great shot. I just won’t ever really splurge on Tavares cards because their cost does not match their results on the ice. I like playing possession hockey so speed is not as important, but I can find cards that fit that mold better who don’t end up costing as much as Tavares.
Returning to the duplicates, Parise follows the Karlsson mold of being a -1 in overall and basically every attribute category when compared to the Dynamic Duos version. He’s also 1 to TK and 1 to BM here. In the DD version, he is 2 to FB and 2 to WK.
Wrapping up with the final card I’ll take a closer look at, Sergachev is a 6-foot-3 defenseman with relatively good mobility. He has some power to his shot but it’s not very accurate. Overall, I don’t love the card, but I think there’s a universe where he makes sense for the right price. He would be more of an easy sell for me if he were a LD who shot right handed.
The total list of players:
- Alex Ovechkin (92 overall)
- David Pastrnak (91)
- Erik Karlsson (91)
- John Tavares (89)
- Jake Guentzel (86)
- John Klingberg (86)
- Zach Parise (85)
- Mikhail Sergachev (85)
- Joonas Donskoi (83)
- Jared Spurgeon (82)
- Martin Jones (82)
- Yakov Trenin (76)
