I agree, when you start bragging about fixing your laggy menus as a feature after making the game for over 32 years.. 32 years of NHL games. There is a definite problem with upper management. Ever since hut enter the picture the game has been on a downward spiral in all other aspects. All they care about is Hut and your money. Copy paste cash grab that your going to buy cause it's the only game in town..
Why do you think the game is copied and pasted every year? Can you give me an example of a game that comes out annually and doesn't use the previous game as a foundation? Yeah, it would be great if we could completely rebuild the game every year, but that's absolutely not possible and really doesn't make sense. If we went the route of not releasing a new game until it was completely rebuilt, we'd be looking at several years between releases.
If all we cared about was HUT, there wouldn't be any other modes. This year, a lot of work went into an offline mode with no micro transactions. The same thing happened with Franchise Mode previously. There are more modes in the game without microtransactions than there are. I understand there are some that feel HUT hasn't been good for the game. However, without it, we'd most likely see less happen on a year to year basis.