Sadly, I have never seen a better online game and community that exhibits such self-destructive qualities than this fun gem. I have to preface that unlike the majority of the community I have never been into hockey before playing this game (soccer is my choice of sport) but despite that I have loved this game for over three/four years now and have used this game as my "hop on, play a game or two, and hop off" type of game due to the short yet competitive nature of each game. In other words, this game is the tiktok/youtube shorts of games for me. To better describe my background, I must confess that for the longest time I thought "crashing the net" meant scoring a powerful goal so that the puck hits the back of the net (so sorry to those I queued with who would tell me to crash the net secretly in team chat like I knew of this unheard-of strategy). This game has sort of gotten me into hockey as a sport and I very much appreciate its existence but I write this review to offer my fun perspective on how I believe this game has slapshot itself in the foot multiple times and will soon die from sepsis rebound (?).

I know many (veteran) players talk about the servers, but being on constant high ping (rip NA West), those slapshot signature lag spikes don't phase me at all (probably because I can't dribble for ♥♥♥♥ in this game). What I find to be the biggest problem in slapshot to stunt its growth as a challenging-yet rewarding experience for YEARS now has to be how generally unwelcoming and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-y a huge part of the community has been. Many do not know the difference between banter and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or confidence and ego, and it really doesn't feel like a good look in regards to the future of the game.
Please take a look at my personal matchmaking experience over the past few years (constantly fluctuating from plat 1 to plat 3 due to me being too ASS to carry myself): going from winning against people worse than me and them calling me a ♥♥♥♥♥ for tryharding against them in gold 3/plat 1 elo vs. getting ♥♥♥♥ on by 3 gretzkys and then my team calling me a ♥♥♥♥♥ for making mistakes that they have supposedly never made themselves in plat 2/plat 3 elo. I understand a lot of my hockey bros may not be too familiar with anger management when enjoying leisurely activities but please explain how then do I win in this game...other than to find the "Slapshot high"?
Fellas I can't lie slapshot is like a drug addiction where I keep chasing that high of having two other positive-minded players on my team that pass and work together for that dirty through pass to the middle where the guy SLAPSHOTS and scores a beauty and I wait three minute queue times at 10PM just to find that feeling again but then 50% of my games I get hit with a reality check by one (or two) of the four horsemen of the slapocalypse on my team:
1. the gretzky that stands still motionless for like 3 seconds after I make a ♥♥♥♥ pass and then the forfeit pop-up depressingly asks me if I want to leave the game without a leave penalty
2. the guy who doesn't care about the penalty and leaves the game after being 1-0 down or
3. the guy afk taking a ♥♥♥♥ because he didn't think matchmaking would put him against three diamond players instead of giving him the standard 5 minute queue time or
4. the guy who leaves after making one mistake to avoid ridicule which arguably makes his mistake look even worse.
It is insane that the ideal choice is the afk guy because then they usually offer some remorse for being afk and try hard to win for the rest of the game (or worse case scenario they become one of the other archetypes). But I don't understand (and don't think I ever will) how miserable you must be with this game if you try to ff or leave with 3-4 minutes left in the game with a goal difference of 2 (IT'S ALWAYS TWO).
(Fun fact: when 25% of your matchmaking games are for filling in another player who left, you have to stop to think about how awesome this community can be)

The obvious solution! Get your friends to play with you! You see this strategy employed often in the lower ranks (up to gold 3). I have tried to get countless friends to play just for them to drop the game due to the terrible support for new players (how did we choose the pond over casual matchmaking). The new player experience will go as follows: finish tutorial to learn controls, pray to god they didn't queue at 1AM or be in South America, finish getting 5-0'd, stumble upon shop screen during 5-min queue time, look for drip to customize their character and quit the game once they realise they need to get ♥♥♥♥ on 200 more times to grab the cool hat that leaves the shop in two days.

Yep, fellas, this one is more convoluted, but I think the shop in this game might be the most anti-newcomer experience of this game, and maybe one of the worst you will ever find in an online game. FOMOing 'metics with insane prices so the veterans (majority being premium users) keep up the grind (I guess?) and don't quit...and when they changed the coin acquisition system so instead of getting 300 coins per level up, you get 300 coins after playing 10 games for an average of 30 coins per game (in a game where queue times can potentially take longer than the actual game). Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm level 100+ so I found this to be a decent (yet slight) improvement to the coins I was getting before as a F2P, but when the level system has always been exponential...does this not make getting coins for newcomers even slower, when surely level 1 to level 2 for example takes less than 10 games played to level up?

And what were they smoking throughout the game's entire lifespan making 90% of all players that have played this game have zero cosmetics worth like 4000+ coins when most of this game's updates are made towards expanding the diverse selection of these cosmetics, only to have them currency-walled behind literal WEEKS of playing on average..?? They designed the shop as if people would stop playing the game after they unlock every single cosmetic in the game (which is pretty much impossible anyways due to the FOMO rotation). I don't understand that mindset at all for a game with such a small community at all but I'm not a game dev so I don't want to sound too arrogant either. For now, all I can say is that the shop experience sucks ASS as a F2P, although I'm not too sure how it is as a premium player. All I can show is that the most expensive price of 12500 for a cosmetic may as well take LITERAL MONTHS for me to save up for and then MORE LITERAL MONTHS to wait for it to pop up in the shop. They are making one of the only aspects of the game that keep the game "fresh" MONTH-GATED, ergo the 90% of players past and present having NOTHING.

Maybe I should have wrote this review earlier because all these problems have persisted for YEARS and have continued to drive off new players. Ultimately, with the smaller community this game has cultivated, balancing ranked matchmaking and server issues may be the most glaring issues as of late, but balancing and fixing all that with such a small community is hard and that's why I say this game has doomed itself after neglecting and now essentially giving up support for newcomers (of which we had a couple waves of them where nothing happened, INSANE). And now, giving the veterans something to constantly complain about (poop servers) MIGHT be the nail in the coffin for the game soon as more and more vets end up leaving. But all good the cyberpuck dlc does look sick

a really close community, and the skill ceiling of this game is really high. A fun way to pass time with friends!!

Through this game I found out I am easily scared. I had to look up tips to see if my boy could stop getting rejected. Also, the bgm is beautiful.

Play this game when you want to cry with friends