A great game built on the main core of the award winner NHL 2008, nothing but improvements.
I will start with the new Be A Pro mode. Simply put, it's a ton of fun! The game lets you play in one of three ways. Authentic lets you experience everything, including sitting on the bench, position lock will allow you to play the player coming on to replace you while you are benched, and finally you are able to turn off line changes. At first I was not entirely sure this would work, but after playing it I discovered it is actually a lot of fun and very realistic controlling one player.
The only real complaint I have with this is that sometimes your teammates are just in stupid positions or should be passing/shooting instead of skating around. However I suppose these problems arise in real life hockey as well.
On to dynasty mode. Nothing much has changed, and perhaps I am mistaken, but there is no longer the ability to play with the financial aspects of the team like ticket prices and such. If this has been taken away (or simply not added) then I consider it a pretty big let down as far as dynasty mode is concerned.
In the end however this game is still very fun to play, especially online (I have not yet tried the EA league online yet, looks like a blast though).