Blanked out players in edit lines - Playoff mode. PLEASE HELP!

Ok ... I have been playing NHL games since the came out in the 90's and never have I had an issue like this.  I continue to purchase every NHL game each year digitally for my PS4.  I have 2 PS4 consoles and this is happening on both units.

My cousin and I have a yearly tourney and we pick teams out of a hat and have 7 game series with them head to head in playoff mode that way we can keep track of the stats and at they end we have our own version of the "Stanley Cup" that we hold till the next edition comes out the following year.

We love to customize our game experience (rules, game time, strategies) and also we edit our lines to bring players back and forth from the scratched list, but until the recent edition of NHL 19 came out we have been experiencing an issue where when we want to replace players, the list of players appear to be blanked out ... not all of them ... I'd say 90% of the players.  Now we can "select" these blank players but you basically have to guess which ones they are to replace them, this is very time consuming and very annoying.

I have called EA and escallI have tried all the console troubleshooting tips and nothing seems to work.  I have event formatted my ps4s and started from scratch and still the same issue.   This is the 1st time we have ever had this issue with any NHL game ... or any game for that matter.

I am starting to think that maybe this is a defective digital game and that I should just get a refund and buy the physical copy ... I am at a loss! ☹️

I have attached a pic to show the lists of players and you can see the blanked out portion.

Any suggestions?