My frustration with rosters and player models has always been that EA for whatever reason (Understaffed, too many other more important focuses, all valid reasons) has never been good at all. They miss handedness, player hair, size, skills, and player moves all of the time. They're also bound to the rules that they are handed by the NHL when they sign the contract as to when players can be added (Due to the NHLPA and having to play a certain number of minutes or games, if i remember right).
This could all be easily alleviated if they just added an in-depth roster editing and player creation system. Sure, it would take time, but considering how long they've been using the same system for current player creation (I believe the Player Editor in 14 was for all intents and purposes, the exact same as 09, maybe even earlier than that, with small things added. Even the face models were largely unchanged), EA could create a new system, find a way to either allow offline file sharing through rosters that could be shared, downloaded, and installed via flash drive (no need on their end to monitor a server, track uploads, and host files), or if they really wanted to go the extra mile they could add the online side of it, and host servers to share sliders, rosters, and created players.
The Show (yet again) is a great example. Guys have throwback teams, improved rosters, improved attributes (Something the Revamped team used to be able to do, but that was taken away for whatever reason). The Show allows near total customization, but more importantly, they made it easy to share those things with others, whereas EA seems to handcuff you.
I've gone on and on before about how awesome it would be if they allowed us to share/edit rosters, and give us a better create a player interface with more options, but they could even take advantage of the powers of the new system and find a way to give access to things like importing image files for things like jerseys and face scans. Guys have been doing it in NHL04 on the PC forever, and that game still gets played by people. Doing the same for NHL would mean people could create their own jerseys, better team customization with custom jerseys for that, and then better face scans without EA having to lift a finger past launch.
EA just needs to take the reigns off of the users, because OS alone has a talented user base that's more than capable and willing to do the leg work to improve visuals and rosters, not to mention tweak sliders and attributes to get a more perfect game.