7 NHL 18 Tips You NEED to Know

One of my goals with ChelTips is to ensure when you play one of your friends, they ask you this question “How did you do that?!?“… or accuse you of cheating, glitching, something along those lines. Basically, you need to prove you are the alpha chel player. Knowing these 7 NHL 18 tips and tricks before your friends will help secure your alpha-ness.

UPDATE: Check out my 8 NHL 19 NEED to know Tips!

Control Changes

The first 3 tips come in the form of controller button combination changes From NHL 17 to NHL 18 for certain actions. There are three controls that have changed button combinations and that includes: Puck Chop, Hipcheck, and the Between the Legs Deke.

Puck Chop

Puck chop was RB + right stick(desired direction of chop), now in NHL 18 you need to press on the right stick(R3) and then point it in the direction you want to chop.

Tip: You have a few seconds of buffer time between when you press R3 and when you swing your chop. If you anticipate doing a chop along the boards then you can press R3 as you are skating towards the boards and simply swing your right stick in the direction you want to chop once you get there, much smoother than trying to click both R3 and RS direction quickly.

Hip check

Now that you know the new puck chop combination you might be asking yourself… wasn’t R3 hip check?

Indeed it was! Hipcheck is now R3 + LB(L1 on PS4) in NHL 18.

It’s important to note that you must press R3 FIRST then LB. If you press LB first then you will just go into the shot block animation.

Tip: I’ve been using the same hipcheck tactic that I used in NHL 17 and it is still effective.

Between The Legs Deke

You may will recall this deke from NHL 17:

In NHL 18, the control is slightly different.

Pull the puck back on your forehand then instead of just tapping LB(L1) like you would of in NHL 17 you need to hold it and then pull the right stick diagonally across to the opposite corner. The analog stick movement is almost identical to that of the movement you want your in-game stick to make. Back to a deep toey then pulled back across your body.

This means performing the between the legs deke takes slightly longer and personally I think that is a good thing since the deke was way overused in NHL 17. With that said, its success rate could be increased. The clip above looks great but it took me a few tries to get that nice smooth movement even with a player like Connor McDavid. In it’s current state, I wouldn’t bother using it in a competitive match.

Defensive Skill Stick Poke Check

The Defensive Skill Stick(DSS) is one of the flagship features of NHL 18. You have no doubt heard about it by now; however, did you know you can poke check without letting go of the defensive skill stick action?

*All checks in the above clips were done with the DSS R3 poke check.

You initiate the defensive skill stick by holding down RB(R1); from there you can swing your stick around with the right stick and also still go into a shot block position with LB(L1).

RB(R1) happens to be the poke check button so many might think they need to let go of the DSS to start poke-checking again but you can actually use R3(press right stick in) to poke check while keeping your DSS engaged.

Even better news, for defenders, is that the poke while using DSS still auto-aims towards the puck. So as soon as the attacker gets close to your extended stick – hit R3 to poke it.

If the puck carrier is on the opposite side of where your stick is, instead of swinging your stick back manually you could press R3 to have it poke immediately in the direction of the puck and continue controlling it from there, seamlessly. The below clip is from the above montage but illustrates this tactic well:

Tip: Be careful with it! The poke check from DSS will still get you penalties just as often as regular poke-checking if you get it in their skates.

IMPORTANT: Don’t let this tip make you think you should always be R3 poke-checking when in DSS. I’ve found manually making contact with the puck or just closing off passing/shooting lanes while in DSS to be very effective – spamming R3 will get you into penalty trouble. Get familiar with it, add it to your arsenal, and use it strategically.

New Dekes

Besides the new control for the between the legs deke there is a whole set of new dekes you can do:

• Between the legs shot
• Between the legs pass
• Backhand drag shot(Datsyuk)
• Backhand drag flip
• One-handed tuck
• One hand deke
• Tap deke
• Backhand forehand sweep(Zetterberg)
• Juke dekes

Too many to explain and illustrate in this post so check out my NHL 18 New Dekes Guide to see and learn how to do them all.

Money Puck

The money puck is a brand new concept to the EA Sports NHL series and is exclusive to NHL Threes. While playing a game of NHL Threes you will notice this under the scoreboard:

There are three different types of pucks and you can see them all in the above screenshot:

• Negative(Blue) – Gives you +1 and then takes away goals from your opponent depending on the puck value(max = 3)
• Positive(Orange) – The value on the puck is how many goals it is worth(max = 3)
• Regular(Black) – Just a regular boring puck that is worth +1 goal and nothing else

The order of the money pucks is completely random. You can see the current puck and next 3 upcoming pucks, as seen in my screenshot.

This essentially makes it so you are never out of a game. A couple money pucks and you could go from losing terribly to winning the match!

Tip: Shooting the puck out of play will NOT move you to the next puck. In fact, it will result in a penalty and give your opponent a penalty shot.

Watch how the above 3-0 online match played out after that screenshot:

NHL Threes Penalties

If you’ve played NHL Threes, which I highly recommend you do(a ton of fun!), you have no doubt noticed that you are getting away with a lot more than usual… Maybe you’re playing with Pittsburgh and EA added a new Pittsburgh referee feature?? Not quite, penalties are arcade style in NHL Threes, meaning tuned way down. So, it’s more like every team is Pittsburgh.

The only penalties that are called:

• Delay of Game – Only for shooting the puck out of play; trying to start fights goes uncalled
• Tripping w/ Body – You can’t trip with your stick but you still can with your body

Examples of both calls:

Tip: Stick infractions are all turned OFF, even the animations players do when high sticked, tripped, etc. Nothing with your stick will hinder a player – it can only connect with the puck.

Tip Two: No penalties for hitting, even if they don’t have the puck. Grab Hedman or Chara and crack as many skulls as you like. Goalie interference is not a penalty but if you knock the goalie over then any resulting goal will be called off.

OKay, now go prove to your friends who the alpha chel player is!

Did you embarrass them with any dekes, defensive plays, hip checks, a combination of everything? Tweet me a clip @ChelTips so I can help spread the humiliation.

See ya on the mini-rink!