Glad you enjoyed it! I think that may have been our best game of the series, I was particularly happy with what we did with our franchise mode, alas, the NBA series always took priority and sadly there is no competition for EA, hence my reason to go back and revisit games that I enjoyed versus having to spend money on a slight upgrade.
The fact that the game is still a port of the 360/PS3 era of games just rubs me the wrong way. The games on the current generation of consoles just looks, feels and plays like a dated game. Having played some NHL '98 and NHL '02 on the PC lately, I can honestly say that the CPU AI is far better and smarter in those games than they are in the present games.
Good thing this community is still alive though to keep the tradition of fun hockey games alive, and updated!