You wouldn't believe how popular 2004 has become in the recent year. Based on the download numbers there are 6000-10.000 people playing it. It has huge communities in Russia, Finland and Slovakia. They have many online leagues for it... NEHL is probably the best organized. It's only about 2004 online play now.
http://pressnehl.nhlpc.net/
This is the NHL 2004 headquarters. Feel free to register. 2004 simply has the best engine ever... some annoyances but I generally prefer it even over Next Gen hockey.
PS: If you need the base game, let me know via pm.
PS2: We could really, really use someone who knows html and JavaScript. All the menus are written with JS/HTML and we could do amazing things if we had someone who can code.