WOC Skill Match Making

This is a bad idea. The matchmaking times are already long enough. Adding an additional filter will slow them to a stop. 
 
Secondly, in my opinion skill based matchmaking is kinda lame. Everyone is so afraid of a challenge these days. Lean in and beat that sweaty team of elites playing drop in cause they can’t hang in clubs. You’ll never really improve by only playing other players on your level. If online is too scary go play be a pro lol.

In past years the matchmaking would start searching for clubs around your level and expand the search as time went on.  Most times you'd find a competitive match, but if the population was low you might end up playing a team way above/below your skill level.  This year there appears to be no skill level criteria in the matchmaking at all.  My club is regularly getting matched up with teams far below our skill level within seconds of starting a search.   We're not an elite club by any stretch, but we're decent.  This year our record is wildly inflated due to how often we match up with low-division teams.  I can't imagine the game is fun for struggling or new players that are being fed into a meat grinder on a regular basis.

And as far as "you need to play better teams to get good" goes, that's only true to an extent.  At some point the skill gap makes it impossible to learn anything except how to get crushed.  Putting a kid whose never boxed before in a ring with prime Mike Tyson won't teach him how to box, it  just teaches him how to get pummeled.

There are plenty of non competitive game modes to learn the basics and refine skills. So no kids are getting tossed in with Tyson. They are choosing to go in unprepared. Playing other silvers in drop in isn’t going to make you any better and will actually teach you bad habits.

Also the whole concept is lame. Look at real sports…the bottom feeders don’t just opt out of playing the top teams. Bears coach, “It’s actually not fair that we have to play the packers cause they are better than us” 😂 

While I agree this isn't a good idea due to the issues at times of low population, what they did have last year was a better state. There has to be some level of it seeing if you look at it on a whole the game has different tiers of difficulty. If you remove skill based matchmaking why not put all online game modes to superstar difficulty without an option to change. That to an extent is what you as stating with that view point. Which isn't fair play to everyone who plays the game. 

I do see the idea there where in theory it would make sense that they should be able to learn and get better but if you are not having fun at a game, you may not always play, what gives you a reason to continue and not walk away, which would hinder the player volume more? There has to be some staggering to allow them to properly learn (like in offline modes going from rookie to pro, then to All Star and lastly Superstar, hall of fame)

Plus WOC isn't technically hockey per say, it's a "Pricy game of Pond Hockey", where its based around meta builds along with over usage of skills and feature moves (which ultimately affects the game as a whole with nerfs of those overused features - green one tees as an example). For a younger player or casual, it is not fun or a learning experience to get matched with high skill, seeing you are not learning about the game of hockey or having fun, just inflating the win column of higher players. 

The mentality that if they are too scared then just quit is why I stopped bothering, being a decent player at it and wanting to just in and try for fun with my nephew (as I'm mostly offline for 20+ years), doesn't build a strong community and actually hurts the wait times for games, cause they move on to different modes or different games, where I'm solely offline again and my nephew won't even touch an NHL game anymore, for this exact reason (we would get put against top tier players in starting few games).  

Hello. Rank is not considered with matchmaking currently. If it were, this would cause longer wait times for matches due to a smaller available player pool.

You understand you make this game extremely boring for good teams? Elite ranks gets matched with silvers 9 games of 10.