Agreed that the rating system is flawed. If they gave Kane his realistic attributes, he probably would only come out like an 87 or 88 overall because the overall rating puts so much emphasis on defensive awareness. He should be a super high end offensive player and average/below average in defense and physicality. That's the player he is. He's a great player because of his offensive ability. He's never going to win a Selke, so why give him Selke caliber defensive stats? That's dumb.
I'm starting to agree with the guy(s) who have said to just get rid of overall ratings and go solely with the individual attributes. Only disadvantage to that is it would be more difficult for casual fans to identify useful players. Everyone can look at Crosby's 95 overall and say "well that's obviously a great player". Sifting through individual attributes would be more difficult, and I think it might put off the average fan.
OV's are so subjective because we don't know how important attributes such as shot blocking, fighting or poke checks are.
I'd rather EA does something like 2K did a few years back and rate players according to their player type.
A goon could be 95OV but as a goon. If you changed his player type to "Sniper" his OV would drop to 40.
I have no problem with Kane being a 96 OV (or whatever he is), as a sniper/offensive threat.
But when guys like Toews get a 94 and are seen as the games #2 centre, then I have a problem.
In the end though, the ratings are insignificant because EA does
such a poor job with player separation and differentiation.
There really is no difference between most players and teams. Especially when the CPU controls them. Every player becomes Patrice Bergeron.
Until the NHLPA allows for sub 75 OV players on an NHL roster, we're stuck with the broken system we have now.
It's a shame though.
I love playing CHL and AHL games because you can really feel the difference between player types. A sniper snipes, a dangler dangles and a grinder grinds.
A grinder will never be mistaken for a skilled-guy.
If the devs could get the same level of separation at the NHL level, the game would be close to perfect.