Master The Poke Check in NHL 17

Mastering poke checks really comes down to timing, which unfortunately can’t exactly be learnt from just reading a guide – that will only come with practice… yeah not a great start to a “Mastering Poke Checks” guide, I know. “Hey, here’s how to master poke checks – go practice until you master them!” … thanks a lot ChelTips, great advice.

With that said, the below tips will help you master poke checks much faster and keep you out of the penalty box. You might already be aware of them but hey there’s only one way to find out! …

If you haven’t already, it would be a good time to check out my earlier NHL 17 Defense guide. It touches on Poke Checks among many other defensive tools – consider this the advanced or intermediate follow up to that.

*Important Note: In NHL 17(and 16), spamming poke checks will slow down your player. This adds even more importance on learning to properly time them.

We’ll cover general poke check tips and then dive into some zone specific stuff.

General Tips

How to Poke Check: RB or R1

Handedness

Whether your player is left or right handed does play a small part here because that determines which hand they will be holding their stick in when poke checking.

Let’s say you are chasing your opponent with a left handed player(stick will be held in their RIGHT hand while poking) and you are slightly behind them on their right side. The screenshot below will illustrate.

You can see that the poke check is almost reaching around the opponent since you have to go across your own body. If you were a right handed player then your poke check would be going almost right through the opposing players leg and there’s a good chance that will result in a tripping penalty.

Stop Spamming!

As mentioned earlier, spamming slows down your player so make sure you get yourself within reach of the puck before even attempting the poke check or you might never get there.

In addition, the more you spam the more likely you will be to get a penalty.

Fun fact: The “discipline” attribute is a modifier on the likelihood of getting a penalty. At least it was in the EASHL back when users could customize the attributes so I’m assuming that still applies today. In my experience, it still does. With better disciplined players you may be able to get away with one or two extra pokes near the skates, but I still wouldn’t recommend trying it.

Defensive Zone

Turn OFF auto back skate! I think I’ve mentioned this in several posts. I should probably just add a permanent banner to the top of the site telling everyone to turn off auto back skate. It is evil. You can do so via:

Settings > Controller Settings.

Without auto back skate you will be able to properly control when your player switches between skating backwards and forwards using Vision Control(LT or L2). This is very important when it comes to poke checks because if an opposing player has almost got by you; then skating backwards and trying to poke check them will be a sure penalty. You will want to turn around to get a better angle.

Defending a Rush

The most important part here is getting the correct angle and adjusting your speed. You will want to try and poke check them as early as possible. If you let them get in too close then they will just use you as a screen and fire it bar-down.

Note almost all the poke checks in that video were done immediately after they passed the blueline, even the opponents poke check on me in one of those clips. That’s what you want – as soon as you start letting players get time and space after they enter your zone then you are likely going to be in some trouble. Especially when you get into the higher ranks.

Knowing When NOT To Poke Check

Just as important as knowing when to poke check; you also want to be able to recognize when a poke check is too high risk for a potential penalty and go for a hit instead(or stick lift). I’m loving the hitting so far in NHL 17 – bumps and nudges are more effective than ever and a great tool for when you’ve almost been beat.

Bait and Switch

My personal favourite! When your opponent has puck possession and is breaking out, use a player that is NOT covering the puck carrier and instead block off a passing option – this will give them some false confidence as they think they only have the AI to deal with. Let’s watch what happens:

You can see as soon as they get within poking distance of the AI defender, I switched and got aggressive before they had a chance to react.

Offensive Zone

Same rules as above apply; however, in the offensive zone it’s a lot more likely that you will be chasing your opponent instead of them skating towards you.

Skate Towards The Puck

What I mean by this is get use to pointing your player towards the puck or where the puck is headed and NOT the puck carrier. This will give you the proper angle for poke checking instead of tripping. Here is a good and bad example:

The second clip in that video you can see I was going towards the player’s body and very nearly got a penalty before I got lucky and managed to still get the poke.

Same goes for when your opponent is along the boards, don’t skate in right behind them – get in on an angle from whichever side your opponent’s stick is on. You may have noticed I attempted this in the above video stick. Usually when you are in a close up situation like that it’s better to do a stick left; however, I do realize it failed in that video but it does work more often than not!

The above doesn’t only apply in the offensive zone of course, here are some neutral and defensive zone examples:

Did This Help?

After writing this post and reading it myself I questioned how helpful this would really be… I’m still unsure so I’ve posted it anyway and left it up for you all to decide. Is the above info common knowledge to most NHL 17 players? Hopefully it has at least proven useful for someone.

See ya at the blue line!