Franchise mode: AHL players without contract

Exact same issue with AHL players for the Marlies, specifically for G. Estephan, G. Wilson, H. Elynuik, M. Read, R. Chartier, R. Clune, S. Pooley, S. Sabourin, T. Guadet, and T. MacMaster. They are 100% playable and can accumulate gameplay stats, but they simply do not appear as options for the trade block, for roster moves, or for contract negotiations no matter what filter I select to search for them.

It 100 percent is a bug. I'm in the 3rd season of my Franchise Mode and there are a half-dozen teams that have under 35 players signed in their ENTIRE organization. If you check out their AHL affiliate, you will see the lines/stats etc., but those same players do not appear in the "find a trade" screen and...even worse...appear as free agents (while the season is ongoing) and can be signed! 

It was the last straw for me with NHL 21. A total disgrace.

I've been mainly focused on the Marlies, but I didn't know the distinction between "signed to the Leafs" vs "signed to the Marlies" was such that some Marlies players could be moved but others couldn't. I'll give free agency a try and see if that answers my issues.

It may be too late now, but in future Franchises you play, you fix that by going into a franchise to see who all is assigned to your team (write the list on a piece of paper, or a text doc), then go to the rosters menu in the main menu and dump everybody from your AHL team that you don't have control over and don't want control over, and replace them with people you want in your organization. Sign them to one-year contracts in the "edit player" screen, and moving forward always ensure that, at the start of every season, you have enough players to fill both your NHL and AHL rosters or else the game will auto-assign players to fill out your AHL roster, and you'll have to sign them in order to move them off your rosters.
It's frustrating and stupid that there isn't a way to remove them without signing them, it's incredibly stupid that we're limited to only 50 contracts (making it an arduous process to sign and trade the many guys on your roster that aren't in your organization, because you have to sign, sim a few days, trade them, then sign more, and of course your reputation takes a hit for immediately trading guys you just signed...) As long as we're under the cap, I don't see why it matters. But... that's what's happening. There's enough guys on every team's AHL affiliate to field a game-day roster, and in order to do that, the game assigns several guys to each team that isn't signed.