Poke checks seem bugged, if they aren't, they might need a rework or a tutorial

There are significant moments in EASHL, even with a 6'2 DD, mid-high 90s Stick checking, high strength, elite stick em up or elite NC, I'm seeing poke checks as basically a useless strategy as a D main in a D1 club who regularly reaches Elite (I've tested on a bunch of builds as well). I loved D in the last game except in the case of L2 spam, well L2 spam is almost gone so kudos, but you've demolished the rest of the smart positional D archetype so now I've just been cycling to FWD throughout sessions as to not lose my mind.

A detailed list of poke issues:

• The punishment for poking is way too severe, even if I do get extremely get lucky and a poke works, my guy is so broken after that the 5000 fwds with wheels will just get the puck back anyway, so it's a useless strategy for D in most cases.
• Stick lifting falls into this category, it can trigger but the FWD kits are too good to make it viable due to the punishment you get for executing the lift.
• Without stick em up, even with high stats on a good d build, throwing a poke out looks like I'm under pressure, the animation is so goddamn slow that anyone with any semblance of reflexes can EASY work around it.
• If me and the FWD are face to face in medium range, I can poke the puck and have many moments of collision and actually hear the stick check sound repeating over and over again, and no animation cue is happening showing they are losing the puck, they never actually lose the puck in the end. 
• If the FWD is breaking past me and I successfully poke and the blade of my stick makes collision with the blade/puck, same thing, tons of sound cues and no animation cues that a poke has taken place, the FWD will never lose the puck no matter how much audio indicates a poke should have happened. These issues frequently result in goals and really makes playing D suck.
• Poking successfully when face to face sometimes just pops the puck up in the like half a foot off the ice and the FWD will ALWAYS get it back, even if I have elite NC.
• When poking when off foot, speed bursting or turning, my guy will just fall over sometimes, this is just another thing making pressing the poke check button, a staple in NHL D play just a really sketchy feeling strategy. I've made an effort to smoothen my inputs compared to last game but it makes no difference in the end because of all the other issues affecting the pokes, it's not worth it.
• Sometimes you can get a perfect poke and your stick basically collides with the blade & puck of the FWD and your stick stops dead in it's tracks, like there's a force field around their stick.
• When I play fwd and I'm face to face with a D i can just casually go left, right, left, right on the right stick and I can literally see them freaking out poking and colliding with my stick and absolutely nothing happens.
• Poke checks seem to be easier to execute in the neutral zone for FWDs on other FWDs, I think it's just because wheels might not have proc'd yet, or they haven't chosen a side to stick handle on, but as soon as a FWD doesn't want to be poked, he can't be no matter what.

As a result of this I've changed my D builds to be a lot like a power fwd and I go on rushes, we play 6s like 3s and it's terrible hockey. I use NC and truck, I've never been a truck player, I've always been the best on my team at pokes and clean Lidstrom style d play using pokes and position and now it seems impossible. The only viable strategy is really lame big hits out of position high risk trash, or I just switch to FWD, which is crazy based on long I've been playing only D.

If I'm missing something,  please enlighten me. I've tested so many different things with it and it's not usable in game against a bunch of players with Wheels, Warrior, Big Rig, etc. I'm not sure if they are bugged or wrongly tuned or just fundamentally implemented to be a different game mechanic than all other NHL games, but maybe you should tell people wtf is going on.

In conclusion, an entire beloved archetype of hockey, the smart positional D man has been kitted out of the game.