 A reviewer for "Next Generation" remarked that the player graphics and animations, while impressive in absolute terms, fall short of those in the PC version of the game and competitor "NHL Powerplay".He also found the control was not as smooth and intuitive as in the Genesis version, and compared the game unfavorably to "NHL FaceOff '97".Air Hendrix of "GamePro" agreed that "NHL 97", while graphically impressive, was not as good as "FaceOff" due to its lack of strategy-oriented features.