Islanders: Mathew Barzal NHL 22 Rating Revealed

It’s that time of year again. With the NHL season around the corner, EA Sports is set to release their new video game, NHL 22, on October 15. Every year, they slowly but surely release ratings before the game comes out to get people talking.

Today, we found out Islanders forward, Mathew Barzal’s rating.  According to the EA Sports NHL account, they decided on an 89 overall for Mathew Barzal.

For context, Mat Barzal was not in the top-50 players rated players in the game last year so he will likely jump up into that category with this bump in overall rating from last season to this year. Also, the rating system is something that I just don’t understand.

Maybe video games have just passed me by but take last year, for example, Connor McDavid was the highest-rated player in the game at a 95 overall. How isn’t he a 99, like in Madden the best players in the game are rated at a 99 overall?

Based on the assumption that the best player in the game is going to come in around the mid-90’s I guess the overall rating at 89 is fair. Like, Auston Matthews rating was revealed to be a 92.

He had a 41 goal season last year in just 52 games and was playing at a 1.27 points per game pace and he’s three points better overall than Barzal? Again, maybe the video game thing passed me by but on an actual grade scale out of 100, he would have to come up pretty close to 99.

Can I propose ratings that actually make sense? For example, as of December of 2020 Mat Barzal (the highest rated Islander) came in at an 86. With Ross Johnston, the lowest Islander at a 76. That’s a range of just 10 points from their best to worst?

Like wouldn’t a 93 overall for Mathew Barzal and like a 68 overall for the worst player on the roster make a little more sense? Like Adam Pelech was rated as a 78 at that time. How?

So on this bizarre, 95 is the best scale, I suppose 89 makes sense for Mat Barzal but he is higher than a B+ player in my mind.