Franchise questions

That would not be surprising actually. Totally something the NHL would fumble. 

That is possible but I find it highly unlikely the NHL would be more restrictive than a league like the NFL.  EA already allows you to edit players in the season mode so it really doesn't seem like some rep from the NHL is barring them from doing that in their franchise mode.  Maybe for something like 2K's "era's" mode, that is harder to work with NHLPA but that's a distant pipe-dream for EA to implement.  

Is the NHL really restricting the ability for them to do what literally every other sports game allows? They didn't restrict 2K from doing it back when they were making video games.  I just find that very hard to believe that the NHL has the ability to tell EA to restrict the ability to edit generated prospects in an completely offline mode.  

If anything, I'd wager the NHL is far more hands off than any other league when it comes to their sports game.

Never underestimate the poor decision making of the Old Man’s Club in charge of the NHL. 

What's more likely, the NHL is so actively involved in the development of the game that they are forcing EA to remove certain features of the game that have zero implication on the NHL or it's players or, EA just hasn't implemented those features in the game yet? 

For years, people thought the NFL was the reason why Madden didn't have a true, create-a-team, turns out that was not the case and EA just hadn't developed the feature. I think it's extremely obvious what the answer is for why certain things aren't in the game and it has nothing to do with the NHL.

I just think both answers are plausible. 

It’s likely to me that EA just doesn’t put the effort into letting you do whatever you want in your franchise. 

That said, if EA came out and said that the NHL put strict restrictions on the licensing agreement preventing some of our wishes from being made I wouldn’t be surprised. 

Tomorrow was my assumption as well, either way, most of this info is far too little and far too late. Best thing now is to wait and see when early access begins, and make judgements from there. Waiting for the reviews to come out. My son and I spent almost an hour reading the negative reviews on XBox as they were hilarious and resulted in us waiting until February before actually buying it. This year I actually decided to pre-order, simply because I am getting more into hockey again after I took almost a year off of watching due to my son being extremely ill, and now that we are getting a better handle on his illness management, I have a bit more time again. Either way, reading the creative ways people negatively review brings a smile to our faces. Best was "poop juice", that one really got my son laughing. 

Can you give an example of this? Are you suggesting that the NHL(PA) would tell EA that players' ratings/ages may NOT be altered by users of their video game? That sounds legitimately insane and I highly doubt organizations with serious IRL issues to worry about would even think about such things. 

There's absolutely no SHOT the NHL itself is restricting customization possibilities for things like franchise mode. 

The NHL has been known to force EA to exclude things like blood from the game for ratings purposes but I doubt it goes much beyond that. 

I would be utterly shocked. "The NHL won't let us add features to the game that would make us all more money." 

No shot. Nice theory-crafting but I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt it. 

Hope your son is doing much better, dude. I couldn't imagine.