EASHL 6vs6: Atrocious Matchmaking

At what point was it a good idea to not only hide the ranks of the opposing team, prior to the puck drop

On this point I disagree with you. It is a good idea to hide ranks until puck drop, even if it feels wrong. Matchmaking has enough problems without adding players/teams who will drop out of every lobby that doesn't favor them (on paper).  

The more important point, and the one where I agree with you, is that matchmaking in general needs to be fixed.  It needs to take a teams' collective RP into account so that matchups more often than not feature teams of similar rank.

Its in 3v3 too...my buddies and myself finally bought 26 on sale for 30 bucks (we will never pay full price for another NHL ever...havent for at least 6 years). Anyhow, hop on 26 last night for our first chel club games together. We are level 11-8-1-1. We get matched up for our first 4 games against prestige 2's-3's-4's. Multiple platinum, purple diamond, and fire badge players lol. Finally for our 4th game we get a favorable match up of levels ranging from the 20's to 40's for an overall team. What even is the point of the rating system, if they arent going to use it to matchmake games. Its pointless. Mideswell not even have ranks.

Just FYI, you don't really need to bother looking at the levels with regards to matchmaking.  All the levels will tell you is how much time a person has put into the game.  That can correlate to skill level in a general sense as a higher level will mean someone who played the game more, but their rank (Silver, Gold, Plat, etc) or RP number will give you a better idea of the match up.  There are plenty of high level players who have modest ranks/RP.

That said, I agree with your point.  My team is composed of high silver and golds.  When our opponents are silver, gold, or even plat, the games tend to be competitive and we have a good win%.  When we face diamonds we've been able to beat them with really careful defensive play but will lose a majority...and then there are the elites (fires)...I don't think we've ever beaten a single one.  Even close games eventually break open in the third.  There does need to be a significantly reduced chance of matching up with a team that far outside your rank.

It doesn't feel wrong. It is wrong. A full disclosure of information should be made available to anyone that's paid for this game. Nothing hidden, no surprises, zero safe space, and an absolute refraining from passiveness. 

As a random and casual player, I should be paired with and against similar ranks and RP. That should be the same course for anyone else playing this game, online, casual or not. Of course, I can understand there being a slight percentage discrepancy for the RP, and I also agree with your point about a need to take into account a team's collective RP and calculating it accordingly. I've also thought about this, over the last several days, after viewing another one of my PS5 Pro screenshots of a much higher collective ranks and RPs team destroying the team that I was on, 8-1 (I scored the lone goal, as a defenceman).

Where I'm going with this is, getting matchmade against people that have been playing together for years, and being paired with random players that aren't quite as structured, isn't at all fun for the latter. And just to add to that point, random players shouldn't be punished for it. And as I'm a random player, I also play this game casually. That doesn't mean that my skill level is lacklustre, but the losses, lack of coordination, etc., are team reflective, due to random players being put together against established teams. And unfortunately, this is becoming more prevalent for each iteration of this series: Randoms vs Randoms, and Teams vs Teams is an abstract concept. 

Bottom line, if this series is being held together by forced full offence, severely limited defence, hole-o-rama goalies, and being on an established team to enjoy the online portion, then this series will not last much longer. And as I've mentioned in my original post, my personal phasing out process of this game is long overdue.

If saving face is EA's MO, then either hide everything, or make all of the information visible. As we currently can't see the ranks or RPs, then why not hide levels and loadouts? If matchmaking is (supposedly) such an issue before (the cross play addition is another story) imagine for example, a Level 1 going into an EASHL 3vs3 or 6vs6, and seeing a P5LVL50 as an opponent or opponents. At this point in this year's life cycle, of NHL '26, it is conceivable. How much fun would that be for the new person? 

Badges under Elite mean absolutely nothing with how they are structured and lost each "season" but knowing prestige levels helps my team know which builds to run.
Seeing a max level using a Jean Spectre McDavid build tells me it's not worth the frustration, but a low level team thinking they can pay to win means they are going to have a bad time (I'm sure some players may smurf but that is pretty rare for hockey) - Same works for players running truculence or Big Tipper etc.; you can learn their exact playstyle pretty quick when you generalize a level = time:skill formula.

Of course, the coding is absolute garbage and AI can throw that all out the window but you get what I mean hopefully. Most teams wouldn't be backing out and causing more issues if they would give everyone proper matches to begin with.

- Blacklists for teams you don't want to play (can be any reason - they have your number, exploiters, raggers, specific builds and XFactors, whatever).

- Better RP calculations

- More, or at least better, division separation

_- idk, SBMM? Something, anything better than what they are using - It's safe to assume people want match quality over quantity. Honestly, how many extra games do they think we're actually getting nowadays?

It may come down to how long you’re willing to wait for a matchup. People are dropping like flies it feels like