Any reason why NHL can’t update player profile pics like FIFA does?

According to Wikipedia, EA Vancouver has about 1,300 employees and works on soccer and hockey. With that many employees working on basically 2 games all the time, I highly doubt they care at this point. They manage to screw up this game year after year and act like they do something. To put it into their be a pro and franchise terms, they spend all their trait points to charm and persuade the fans every year into buying the game and won't buy into the fans thoughts saying that they appreciate the feedback, but its best if they stick to their ideas and development system.

EAs sports game motto is. EA its in the game. Now. If they were true to that phrase. The game itself would be outfitted with everything the NHL currently has. Including pics of players. True equipment. Proper team colours. Better rink design to actually look like the stated rink itself. But alas. It is not so! Every year we hear the pregame hype about how they are making the game more realistic and true to form. And every year, we get a tweak here and there. Nothing truly beneficial changes. Its actually disheartening. Seeing this franchise, which once put out a very enjoyable competitive game, let it deteriorate to the state it is in now.

Licensing and availability I reckon. Soccer in general is vastly more popular and rakes in tons more cash so the network to do what you're asking is, I assume, much greater.

As with nearly all the speculation on these forums, this is incorrect. There are more than 2 games being developed by us in Vancouver. There's a lot more going on at this location than hockey and soccer.

I have to disagree with that opinion. If EA has a direct licensing agreement with NHL and NHLPA, then they logically also have the rights to player profile pictures. If not, then someone seriously mishandled that contract.

Adding just a few profile pictures would already solve most of the complaints. It’s frustrating to see that even players who do have pictures often only have ones from their previous teams.

Downloading pictures from NHL.com shouldn’t be a problem, even if it’s done by a single person. I do similar work myself as a content manager and I can confirm it’s straightforward.

To back this up:
1. NHL.com provides a publicly accessible player database with profile pictures that is used for the website, apps, and often for licensing.
2. EA has historically used these photos in its NHL games, so access clearly exists.
3. Technically, it’s very simple to download the pictures via the API or directly from the website – no massive team required. So this argument about “licensing limitations” doesn’t really hold up.
4. In fact, they already use up-to-date rookie photos in Ultimate Team when players have unique cards, so access clearly exists.

Honestly, I’m getting really tired of this. I’d even be willing to pay an extra $60 if they just updated all the missing profile pictures and added current gear.

They could sell it as DLC, like Forza does with cars – here we could get custom goalie gear (Shesterkin, Ulmark, UPL), masks, etc.

All of this would also make a proper PC release more viable, which is something I’m still hoping to see in my lifetime.

The franchise has an exclusive contract with both the NHL and NHLPA. No reason for face pics to be missing.

Agreed about there being several games being developed. But each game has its own team of developers/designers. Just check the games credits. Different names. Also. There are personnel that aid in the various games developments, that are outside Canada.

Anything artwork-related could be different though.  Headshot pics would be property of the photographer so it would depend on the language of their agreement.   Just because NHL.com can use them doesn't automatically mean EA could also.  Same would be true for goal songs (property of the band), goalie masks (the artist who designed/painted it), anything like that.  I wish they could find a way around it.  The blank silouettes ruin the look of basically every menu after a few years of Franchise mode.  I'm holding out hope they someday replace them with the digital faces at least.  Anything is better than nothing.