It's NHL 22 Trial time, the Release Time has arrived and you can finally hit the ice now with EA Play!
Don't waste a single moment, you can download now and get your 10 hours of free Early Access started with the NHL 22 Trial.
Latest - NHL 22 Trial is now LIVE!
The wait is over! The NHL 22 Trial is officially live on EA Play, it's accessible now and the news was announced by NHL 22 Community Manager Clappy!
Go ahead and look on the store now and you should be able to get the download started if you didn't already.
If you'd pre-downloaded on Xbox, you'll need to still go to the Microsoft Store within the console app to select the game.
You should see a "Free Trial with EA Play" button which will need to be pressed, and you'll receive a prompt to install but it will go by in no time if you've already done that.
NHL 22 Trial Release Time: Early Access via EA Play
It's become the new standard for EA Sports titles that they'll each receive a limited 10-hour Early Access Trial through EA Play, and the NHL 22 Trial is set for a release date of October 7, 2021.
You'll have to be an EA Play subscriber (or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber) in order to take advantage, and players will be restricted to just 10 hours of play time.
After the 10-hour timer has expired, you'll have to pre order or purchase NHL 22 to continue, and anyone planning to enjoy the NHL 22 Trial will have to be careful about that timer.
There were issues with both Madden 22 and FIFA 22 where the timer continued to run in the background unless a console was completely shut down, so it'll be best to shut down your console when you finish using your NHL 22 trial.
While exact release time has yet to be confirmed by EA Play, we're expecting a similar window to what was used with Madden 22 and FIFA 22.
While FIFA 22 was originally scheduled for a 1pm ET launch, it ended up releasing a little earlier in the day, and Madden 22 went live closer to 11am ET.
As of now, we expect the NHL 22 Trial Release Time to be 11am ET (10am CT / 8am PT), but there's always a chance it goes live as early as Midnight ET on October 7, 2021.
NHL 22 Trial Release Time
How to Pre Download NHL 22, File Size
One of the hurdles to the NHL 22 Trial is that they're not super consistent about making them easy to pre-load or download ahead of the release time.
If you're playing on Xbox, there is a workaround that will allow you to download the full NHL 22 game right now that will be playable if you're an EA Play (or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) once the trial goes live.
You'll need to have the Xbox App downloaded and installed on your mobile phone and need to enable the ability to initiate downloads with the app, which should be in settings for both the console and the app.
Once you have everything in place, search for NHL 22 in the app and you'll see the screen below with the option to press "Download to Console."
Because of the way the Xbox app works, you don't have to own the title in order to trigger a download this way, but you will need to have EA Play access or own the title later in order to launch and play it.
We still don't have an official file size on other platforms, but the Xbox Series X|S download is a full 37.37 GB, which is significant but relatively minor compared to the massive sizes seen for most other sports games today.