EHM The Blue Line

I've been watching my games in the game view mode and noticed some problems my defensemen are having. One is that if my defenseman is skating backwards into my own zone and has to turn backward to forward to keep up with an opposing player, he almost always leaves the player to make a huge loop around the zone which usually ends up with a breakaway. These are top NHL defensemen, too. I notice the opposing defensemen don't do this, if they get beat by a player it's usually because they're not fast enough. Also, my defensive zone coverage as atrocious. My defensemen will sometimes sit on the red line next to or behind the goal (even on the PK) while the puck is in front of the net which usually results in a goal. Does anyone have some tactical advice that could help with these problems?

Nope. Sometimes that just happens in the game. The 2d is not perfect in showing the way the game happens in real life. It is frustrating to see that, but not really sure if there is a way to correct it.

Yep, nothing to do about that, it's a 2D-engine issue, as mentionned by Batdad. By the way, keep in mind that it was the first version of the 2D engine, and therefore it couldn't be perfect. The engined progressed a lot over the different patches, but there's still a few things like that from time to time.

By the way, when you have that kind of things, it mainly means that the game is simulating a mistake from one of your players. Sure, it looks weird on the screen, which is frustrating sometimes, but it just simulates a mistake made by your guy that results in a turnover, breakaway, bad goal, etc, so it has no effect on the result of the action. It just looks weird and a bit unrealistic, but that's all.