By: Mark Mullen

Electronic Arts Inc.’s NHL 13 has a release date of September 11, 2012, according to EB Games Canada’s website.

The latest installment of the NHL franchise is already available for gamers to pre-order for the cost of $59.99 on ebgames.ca.

Not much information has been posted about the annually released game, however gamers certainly do have their wish list of features and upgrades.

Dave Colbourne, 20, an avid gamer from Oshawa, said a major feature he would like to see brought to NHL 13 is the ability to continue your ‘Be A Pro’ player from previous NHL games.

“You should be able to transfer the Be A Pro file from NHL 12 or 11 into NHL 13 and that way you don’t have to start from scratch or have no skill again,” Colbourne said.

Colbourne also said he would like to see the ability to start line brawls and choose from college hockey teams.

“It happens sometimes in hockey, but with the amount of fighting they allow in NHL 12, they might as well allow line brawls,” he said.

However, Colbourne said he would like to see the hitting after the whistle taken out of the game because he finds it very annoying.

“When you’re playing online against someone and that person just wants to mess around, they just skate around hitting your players and you just want to keep the game going,” he said. “[Your opponent] can just keep going for three or four minutes just hitting your players and hitting your goalie before you end up back at a faceoff again.”

Another NHL savvy gamer, Andrew Pyziak, 25, from Burlington, said he would like to see more trade proposals in ‘Be A GM Mode’ and see trades develop over time with counter proposals like they do in real life.

“For instance, if you propose a trade to, let’s say, Chicago, and they say ‘We’re close but what do you think about this deal instead?’” he said. “You know, have the computer throw in their own little tweaks [to work out the trade].”

Pyziak also said he would like to have scouts come back from road trips and give you—as a General Manager—the breakdown on specific players.

Last year, NHL 12’s new features were not released to the public until May 24, 2011, so one can only hope that NHL 13’s list of new features may come out around the same time. However, this has not been confirmed and is merely the hopes of gamers like Colbourne.

“I would really love to see the list of new features as soon as possible, to be honest,” he said. “Regardless, I’m still going to buy NHL 13, but I just like looking up and reading about that kind of stuff.”

Currently, there is an NHL 13 cover voting draft going on where gamers can choose from a selection of NHL superstars and vote for which player they want on the game’s cover.

Here’s a link to vote for your favourite NHL player to be on the cover of NHL 13:

www.nhl.com/covervote