(Image: EA Sports) Bruins legend Ray Bourque fires a shot in EA Sports NHL 13

Throughout the week, the Bruins Daily staff will be posting their guide to surviving the 2012-13 NHL Lockout. Today, we will look at getting your hockey fix through EA Sports’ NHL 13’

The Bruins Daily staff would also like to invite our readers to take part in a Google Hangout early next week. Details will be posted on our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts soon.

Yes hockey fans we are sad, very sad. Bruins training camp was set to kick off this morning, but due to the lockout the buildings are empty and members of the Black and Gold are on their way to other countries where they will play hockey until the NHL and the Players Association can resolve this dispute.

All week long here at Bruins Daily we have been helping you out with ways to pass the time while we wait for the NHL to come back into our lives. Today I will introduce you (you probably already own this, or at least know about it) to the thing I will be focusing a lot of time on during the lockout, and that focus will be shifted to NHL 13.

NHL 13 is available for all major video game consoles and can be found anywhere video games are sold.

This year’s installment of EA Sports’ award winning video game brings back the usual game modes we have played for years. Franchise Mode, Be a Pro Mode, Hockey Ultimate Team, EASHL and General Manager Mode all return this year and are all just as good, if not better, then years past.

Two new modes were introduced this year, and boy are they sweet.

The first one is NHL Moments Live. For those of you fimilair with NFL Madden’s Madden Moments, this is the same exact thing. NHL Moments Live gives you a chance to rewrite history from some of last year’s memorable moments. Everything from Sam Gagner’s eight-point night to Chris Kelly’s Game 1 overtime goal against the Washington Capitals is covered. Once the NHL season—hopefully—begins you’ll be able to rewrite moments that just occurred as the game will be updated throughout the season.

The biggest addition—game mode wise— to the NHL franchise this season has to be the GM Connected Mode. In this mode allows gamers to manage, play, or coach with and against friends in their own 30 team human controlled league with up to 750 members. GM’s can also take their experience with them with a mobile companion app, ensuring that they’ll never miss a single moment.

The biggest edition—that’s not a game mode—has to be the addition of True Performance Skating. If you haven’t played a game of NHL 13 yet, the addition of True Performance Skating is amazing, and worth the time alone. Driven by real-world physics and more than 1,000 new game play animations, NHL 13 authentically replicates the explosiveness, momentum, and top-end speed of NHL players. Adding a whole new layer of creativity for players to discover on the ice combined with control offered by the Skill Stick finally gives gamers access to the entire tool set of an NHL player.

If you’re on the fence when it comes to dishing out the cash to pick up this beauty of a video game, I highly recommend it. It may be the only time this year you’ll get to see the 2012-13 Bruins together on the ice.