I'm willing to bet that the problems we're experiencing are due to the "NHL World Championship Tournament" that is currently taking place. The tournament started on March 24th 2018, and that's the exact date that most players started having connection/packet loss issues. I'm sure this Tournament currently takes precedence over all other forms of Online Play, so of course the HUT's and EASHL's are all being affected negatively.
If the EA Servers are bogged down and cannot handle the current influx of users, then EA probably shouldn't have hosted a tournament OR it needs to do right and make the necessary adjustments to accommodate all forms of online play.
PLEASE FIX THIS PROBLEM so that us daily players can get back to enjoying the game again!!!
Feedback from ANYONE at EA on this discussion would be greatly appreciated.