[CgyFlames]

Regarding the linesman not breaking up fights, modders for NHL 2004 already figured out a great solution that EA could easily apply to current games.

In 2004, the fight engine had a hidden time limit, and the ref (no linesman in the game yet) would break it up once the time hit zero. In the vanilla game, you rarely hit zero without a knockout except when using goalies with terrible fighting ratings. BUT, with this discovery, modders edited the roster and lowered everyone’s fighting ratings significantly, thereby making most fights end in a breakup and knockouts rare, usually only achieved with a true heavyweight.

That’s all EA needs to do now. Have a time limit and make the health bars really hard to deplete. I’m guessing the reason they don’t is because they like the idea of fighting being worth something, in this case restoring all your lines’ every with a win, and timing out fights doesn’t have the satisfying “I win” ending.