The community has made a big deal about the matchmaking. Ever since they made the change to the current system in NHL 25 it's been a regular bone of contention with players ( including myself ) bringing up all of the same points you're making.
EA obviously feels differently. For them the priority is that teams find a match-up quickly even if it doesn't result in a game being played.
The reason most commonly given is that the player base is too small to support more granular matchmaking. I feel like the current matchmaking system is just going to make the situation worse by chasing new and lower skilled players away over time. Sending these players immediately into a meat grinder against elite teams is not the way to retain players. There can be a benefit to playing teams better than yours to see how they play and learn from it, but that only works to an extent. Once the skill gap gets too big, the losing team isn't learning how to get better, they're just getting beat down and I don't see how that helps grow the player base.
It has nothing to do with the player pool and everything to do with engagement. Modern MMR systems match players for many reasons, but none of them have anything to do with population. That is an obvious red herring designed by EA to lead the discussion where it's going, in a hole, dominated by people talking about population. It's not about population and never has been.
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