When playing squad battles on NHL 22, we’re all after the same thing – rewards and potentially some recognition by ranking way higher than anyone else on the leaderboards.
In squad battles on NHL 22, you’re virtually racing against the entire community for the top spots without actually facing any of the people that you’re competing against.
Rather, everyone gets to play against random AI opponents at a difficulty that they feel comfortable playing against. And that’s the fun part. The players who put it all on the line and win consistently will be rewarded more points and in return, they will rank higher and get the best rewards.
On the flip side, many greedy-for-point players will burn themselves in the race for ranking amongst the best on the leaderboard, and rank lower than those who went for a safer and more consistent approach.
Either way, whatever your game plan may be, here are the best tips on getting more points in squad battles on NHL 22.
How to Get the Maximum Amount of Points in Squad Battles on NHL 22
To get the most amount of points in each game, follow the two tips below.
Increase Match Difficulty and Period Duration
The best way to get more points in squad battles on NHL 22 is by simply increasing the match difficulty of the games that you’re playing. What you’ll find is that the difference in potential points between a rookie AI team and that of a superstar’s team is between 1,000 and 1,800 depending on the time per period. That’s a lot of points.
Now, I am not saying you need to grind out all of your games against an incredible and in some cases unbeatable AI team, but it’s worth calculating the risk against your abilities and settling for a difficulty that you think you can beat. By the way, beating a pro team is much better than losing from a superstar’s team.
Another way to increase the points you’ll receive at the end of a game is to simply increase the duration of each period. Playing 4-minute periods will practically double the number of points you’re going to get at the end of each game.
This is where it gets tricky. If you’re playing against a superstar’s AI team, it’s best if you score a couple of goals, and get the game over as quickly as possible to cash in on those points before the AI decides to put 4 goals past you and cause you to lose the game. But, if you’re playing against easier difficulties, then it’s worth increasing the period time to 4 minutes so you can really get the most points possible.
Note: Playing against a pro difficulty team for 4 minutes per period will reward you nearly the same amount of points as if you were to play a superstar’s team with 2-minute period lengths.
To help you better understand what number of points you can expect at the end of each game – depending on the difficulty and time of each period, please refer to the table below.
| Rookie | Semi-Pro | Pro | All-Stars | Superstars | |
| 2-Minute | 274 | 415 | 530 | 809 | 1145 |
| 3-Minute | 412 | 623 | 795 | 1214 | 1718 |
| 4-Minute | 549 | 830 | 1061 | 1618 | 2291 |
Note: The above-mentioned potential points after each game will vary on the overall rating of your opponent. The examples in the table above are based on an 85-rated opponent.
Here, it’s also worth mentioning that if two players play against all of their opponents at the same level of difficulty and the same length of period, one of the two players will have a higher score than the other player.
This is because all of your opponents in squad battles are completely random, which means that if player 1 gets a team that is 87 rated while player 2 gets a team that is 85 rated, player 1 will come out with 10 or 20 more points. As you could imagine, after 30+ games, there could be quite a big and crucial difference in the points and ranking. However, there is nothing that you can do about that.
Beat Every Opponent by at Least 5 Goals With 20 Shots on Target
Besides playing on maximum difficulty and setting the period length to four minutes, in order to really maximize your points, you’ll need to win the game by at least 5 goals and have 20 shots on target.
Now, this is where it becomes tricky. If you set the period lengths to only 2 minutes, you may have a difficult time with either winning by 5 goals or getting 20 shots on target as a whole.
While scoring 5 goals isn’t that hard if you know what you’re doing, the 20 shots on target will sometimes be a challenge. My best tip for getting as many shots on target as possible would be by smacking the puck as hard as you can and hoping for that rebound that will allow you to instantly take a shot at the goal again.
How to Beat Every Squad Battle’s Opponent on NHL 22 at Any Difficulty
You’ll win your points by winning the games. Nothing else matters. If you end up losing a game, learn and move on. With this section, my goal is to give you the best tips I have to beat the AI regardless of what overall they have or the difficulty that you choose to play against.
When you jump into a game, be it against a 75-rated team of rookies or an 87-rated team of superstars, it’s essential for you to understand two things – the keepers are really good but also predictable and that the AI can make a lot of accurate passes very quickly.
So, we need to break your team into two parts – defense and offense.
Defensive Strategy
As I mentioned above, when your AI opponent attacks, it will distribute the puck very quickly and often cause you to leave open spaces, which guess what… the computer will take advantage of that without a second thought and most likely score.
So, what you want to do is collapse your entire team the second you lose the puck. That way, your entire team will work together in defending against the AI and everything that it’s trying to do to overcome your defense.
Offensive Strategy
To beat the keeper, what you want to do is simply run on the wing (make sure you have quick wingers) and as you start to drag the goaltender to one side of the net, quickly pass the puck to your other winger and tap the puck in the net.
Deking an AI keeper or trying to pull off some crazy slap shots won’t always work and that will waste a whole lot of time. Now, if you’ve already got your 5 goals, doing slap shots from distance will help you get up your shots on target quite quickly and easily.
Mistakes Players Make That Cost Them Ranking Points
Despite the fact that the squad battles competition is fairly straightforward, many players make some very crucial mistakes that end up costing them a lot of ranking points that they would have otherwise won.
That’s exactly what we’re going to discuss in this section. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the first one.
Rushing the Games
Each squad battles season is 7 days long. That means that you’ll have an entire week to challenge all available opponents including the team of the week.
What you’ll see is that most players grind the season out in the first one or two days, which for one, causes them to make mistakes and ultimately lose points due to fatigue, and two, they don’t have any competitor data. This will prevent you from accurately determining how risky you should play in order to get to the rank that you’re after.
My recommendation is to take it easy and if possible, spread all games throughout the week for the best chance of success.
Playing Against Difficulties That Are Too Risky for Your Level of Skill
When you see how many points you can get by playing against superstar teams, it will almost look like a no-brainer to go for that as opposed to only getting a fraction of the points by playing against rookies or semi-pro teams.
This is where many players mess up because they’re greedy. Losing games will do you no good as far as climbing through the ranks is concerned. So, it’s much better for you to steadily grind out all games on a difficulty that you feel comfortable with, which will allow you to max out the points for that particular difficulty.
Not Having the Right Squad Battle’s Strategy
When playing against AI, all tricks that you can use on an actual player go out of the window. When your opponent is a computer, it makes calculated decisions at all times without overexposing or taking too much risk (as a normal player would in certain cases).
You need to take that into account when setting your game settings. If you’ve read the entire guide, I’ve recommended you the best settings for playing against AI and explained why I went for this strategy.
Final Thoughts
Maxing out the points you can get in squad battles on NHL 22 is both straightforward and quite difficult. You need to find the perfect sweet spot in terms of opponent difficulty so you can really get the most points possible without losing any of the 30+ games that you’ll get the chance to play over the 7 days.
It’s all trial and error. Feel free to implement some of my recommendations, see how you get on and adapt and improve. If this is your very first squad battles season, use it as a learning curve as you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
