I mean honestly, everything they added was cool. Blocking shots, season mode, awards, trades, even the Quartz-themed scoreboard was pretty good. They just wrecked the fundamental gameplay.
I'm pretty sure you already can do these...or I'm just crazy...
Besides fighting, I would fix that ridiculous bug where the other team's goalie being way out of the net causes your player with an empty net to shoot the puck through the roof of the arena.
So hokkee was ahead of his time but too drunk to capitalize on it? He's the only one that I can remember blatantly trying real hockey strategies but quickly abandoning them after they didn't work.
Sports games seem disposable because of the yearly updates now but a classic game endures. That's why people put in a lot of work to update the rosters of old games, and not just the classics like on here. MVP Baseball lost the MLB license in 2005 and you can find roster updates for the 2005 version because it was the peak of that engine.
Is there a way you could add a tab to the nhl94online site that shows standings with DNPs subtracted from point totals and updates when a game is logged? That'd be awesome and less work than posting updates all the time.