hope to see a big improvement in eashl on the nhl 26....

This is all stuff easily fixed in a patch…doesn’t need to wait until 26, but as usual this particular EA development team has proven they don’t care about the customers.

several other EA products listen and engage with the community in what they want/like/dislike. Not the NHL team though 

Along with this I'd like to see the return of the NHL 14 style of player building

This is not an easy fix in the least. We are looking to improve matchmaking, but to say it's an easy fix is absolutely not the case.

Problem never happened prior to cross platform play, starting last year match making was terrible . Somebody knows why this is happening, now, maybe it can't be fixed because it will disrupt something else I don't know, but somebody knows. I guarantee your developers are smart people and there is zero chance nobody in that group doesn't know how to fix it. 

It absolutely is an easy fix, to say it isn’t, is simply gaslighting the community. 

If a company with the resources of EA is claiming that then there needs to be A LOT of internal conversations about replacing engineers. 

Getting a matchup isn’t a problem, getting one that isn’t 2v4, 3v5, or whatever is the problem. Removing match my club size was a colossal mistake. 

Should there be tweaks to the basic backend servers to shorten time? Absolutely. For a company like EA who’s other products have NO issue with this, it is most certainly an easy fix

We'll have to agree to disagree. It's not an easy fix by any means. The old functionality can't simply be added by flipping a switch. I say this all the time. If it were as easy as everyone thinks, it would have been done. It's not that our engineers can't do this. Changes were made with the intent to improve matchmaking. Obviously, it's not going as well as intended. Reverting what was changed means removing the current functionality and rebuilding the old along with all the testing that goes with it. If it happens, it's going to take time. You also have to consider the devs have a lot on their plates with working on the future of the series as well as supporting NHL 25. We all want matchmaking to improve. It's absolutely not an easy fix like is being assumed though.

As a dev, it’s hard to see why this wouldn’t be a easy fix and why would you even need to remove current functionality and top of that rebuild the old. Are the devs on hourly basis? Simplest this is just series of if, else statements whether to accept or reject a match to from server pool and the current implementation could run as is room size isn’t set. Sure there needs to be testing, but basically it’s just a accept/ reject case. 

I'm not a developer so I'm not able to get in that discussion with you. We would have to remove the current MM functionality that is heavily ingrained into the game and reinstate the old along with adapting it for the new game. Again, if this was easy, it might be done. That's not my decision though. Regardless, the new system is built into the game and will be there for the foreseeable future.

I absolutely understand the frustration. We all are experiencing it. Some more than others. For me, I find matches rather quickly, but my club mostly plays 5s. Drop-ins are a different issue since people start backing out when they don't like the match they got. Most often, due to not matching a human goalie. All I can really tell you is that we are working to improve matchmaking. When we have an update, we'll announce it.

Can you elaborate on what changed from NHL 16-24 to NHL 25? Why has this suddenly been an issue that has coincided with the removal of specific matchmaking options ? 

As well does EA have an official statement to the people who paid full price for the game and are dealing with matchmaking issues this far into release? I understand it's a difficult situation, but customers expecting a certain experience and paying good money for it, while approaching 3 months later with no fix in sight, is a great way to burn bridges with an already small community.