People love MLB The Show and NBA 2K gets a fair amount of praise too. Honestly, I think a number of complaints about MLB/NBA are abit much/unnecessary, but look at MLB for example,if some of the main complaints are things like uniform colors, retractable roofs and stuff, you know it's a good game.
NHL does deserve the hate they get. The lack of things they really even improve/make better is sad, and they even flat out admitted they intentionally didn't have certain things in their game because it would "make the game less fun".......It's a hockey video game, you're supposed to include everything that's in a regular hockey game, regardless if you think it's fun or not!
That'd be like MLB not having much(if any) foul balls because foul balls takes away from the fun of the game. It's part of the game,it should be in regardless if a small group of people think it's not fun. EA Sports really just makes NHL more of a game that'd generate the most money online than a game that'd be great to play. There's a reason NHL14 was one of the worst selling NHL games EA has made in almost a decade(even the lockouts and NHL13 didn't do that bad!), people not bothering with buying game after game having the same problems every year in it.