I mean, I don't really know what you can do, if a bunch of buddies don't want to create a club, they don't have to I guess, and I know at least on last gen consoles it can get really slow to find a 6s club game so maybe that's what these players are doing, maybe they were searching for 15 minutes trying to find a game before they gave up and switched to drop-ins, I'm not going to assume.
Either way, if you're an "elite" player, you probably should stay in the club lobbies as much as possible, isn't that more fun anyway? Stomping on drop-in players who have never played with each other before sounds boring as hell, I haven't played a drop-in game in years, except for like, one game as a goalie, but NHL also isn't my "I'm gonna play this online casually by myself" game. I play with the same guys I've been playing with for years on Thurs/Fri/Sat and that's all I need. Maybe there could be "weak/flexible" skill based matchmaking in drop-ins, like, it tries to search for players +/- 2000 RP first, idk.
Either way, even if it's "pickup", it's an online game, it's going to have some level of competitiveness to it, and unless they implement some sort of skill-based matchmaking in drop-ins, which I don't really think they should, you might get wrecked sometimes. If you're willing to play games online, and have any interest in continuing to play and get better, you may as well take opportunities like this to see what works. Even if a lot of what they do seems cheesy/glitchy, you should also be able to see how they play as a team etc. As much as I would like to protect new players so they don't leave after getting stomped over and over in their first handful of online games, I also think it's hard to improve in any online game without seeing what good players do and if you can't stomach a **bleep** matchup once in a while that "PvP" gaming probably isn't for you.
