One thing that used to be in the ratings and has been removed (it may be behind the scenes, but then they should make it editable like the rest of the attributes) is things like shoot/pass bias.
We should be able to edit a player’s shoot/pass bias, check/poke bias, offense/defense bias. For example, you can have players who have pretty good defensive awareness but a high offense bias. This would be someone like Artemi Panarin for example. He’s not bad defensively, certainly has the awareness and stick to be effective, but he has an offensive bias. Rather than a) giving him a poor defensive awareness and having him suck defensively, or b) giving him a high defensive awareness and having him be too good defensively, it would be great to have him have good defensive awareness but a BEHAVIOR that means he’s more prone to breaking out of the zone early, etc.
Likewise, how often do you hear things like “X has a really good shot but he needs to use it more often”. In EA games, if you give him a good shot, he’s going to score a lot of goals. You can give him a bad shot to make sure he doesn’t score more goals than he would in real life, but it’s sucks that that’s currently the solution to this problem. Instead, why not just have a shoot/pass bias and give him a good shot, but an extreme pass bias.
These are the things that would make the game so much better. A player can be a good hitter but not hit often. Surprises people with a real solid check sometimes though. Set a check/poke bias. Aggressiveness is too vague and effects more than just checking. Having players with a high check bias means they will finish their check most of the time. Having players with a low check bias will not rack up a lot of hits. You can still be aggressive, as in pressuring on the forecheck and crashing then net, without registering a ton of hits.
The game needs this type of nuance and player differentiation BADLY.