Ive been around hockey my whole life(39 years), been playing NHL games as well since blades of steel on NES. Agree with all you said. It seems like they care more about HUT(it makes them money so i get it) than anything else. They also focus on adding goofy pregame animations, goal celebrations, goal emotes, etc vs game play. Im cool with the goal celebrations because they happen to an extent, guys talk smack so the emotes are ok… but they should focus on fixing the gameplay above all else. Once you get the gameplay working correctly leave it alone and work on cosmetic stuff. Crazy to think this is NHL but goalies are passing in their own net, cpu dman take off behind their net every time they get the puck and they pass into the goalie of off the net.
They need to leave all that “arcade” stuff to a 3v3 mode and chel needs to be about gameplay. I dont play HUT but i cant imagine guys that do want or care about all the flipping and pushups on the pregame intros?
