First of all, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
But, respectfully, you can't be serious with your first point. And 82-game season where Jonathan Drouin puts up 13 points because the coach repeatedly uses him on the fourth line is not an issue of "just because I don't agree doesn't mean it's wrong." And it's not a quirk of a particular coach. I cleaned out coaching staffs and had the new staffs do similar things. I had a season where Alex Galchenyuk posted 3 goals in a full season. Do you honestly think that reflects the player, the league or what a coach would do? I also, as I said, I acquired Nazem Kadri for a team that lacked any depth at center only to have him never leave the third line. It simply doesn't make any sense. I started seasons with completely different organizations and ran into similar issues with gifted offensive players slotted into the bottom six and playing minimal minutes. I stopped acquiring fighters altogether because despite wanting to have a brawler on my roster they were routinely given top six minutes for reasons I can't begin to understand.
One of the hardest parts to program is the AI, and for some reason it acts completely different with a CPU team vs your own team. I'm not making excuses, but some of this was addressed in earlier patches, however not all saved games could be fixed. I should also make a joke about Montreal Coaching here as well, but I'll leave that for now.
Finally, I don't understand how you can say you haven't run into this issue with high end young talent piling up in free agency. It's been happening for a long time and I've seen it discussed on your message boards and in this very thread.
Because the majority of issues we've seen is people incorrectly looking at information. Free Agent Centre by default shows you every available Free Agent. The issue is most people look at it and say "Oh man, look at all these guys being Free Agents" which they are...except 99/100 all those young guys are Restricted Free Agents. You have to filter out RFAs or look on their profiles to see if they are a UFA or RFA. I'm not saying there isn't cases that get through. We've seen the odd one (and sometimes how the AI is Scouting and how you're scouting directly links interest), but when real issues do occur, we need to see the saves because it's often very hard to replicate the issue. If we can't replicate it, we can't fix it.
(Fun Beta Testing Fact here: During the testing of FHM4, I ran about 100 simulations going about 6 years into the future. During 1 of the Simulations, the Season Schedule broke, and suddenly the 2018/2019 Season was going take over 100 years to play. It didn't happen in any other testers game, and only happened in one of mine. I got a good laugh and half contemplated trying to sim the 100 years to see who would finally win the Cup, but decided eventually to move on).
I truly appreciate your response and your efforts to improve this game, and I've purchased every incarnation you've made, but these are serious flaws that are game breaking for me and I have no interest in taking over the coaching and tactics in order to have a reasonable reflection of what a roster should be.
You're free to choose how you wish to play, however there are going to be quirks when you let the AI do more, especially with the Rosters. It doesn't default best player on the top line every time. However, I would be remiss to point out that you could still play the way you want by becoming the Coach, having your AI do everything you want (settings are under the Manager tab), but lineups.