As its small population (pictured above) suggests, Online Versus Play is a dying mode in NHL 15. When the EA Sports Hockey League inevitably returns for NHL 16, that percentage of users searching for OVP games will likely dip into single digits if the mode is not significantly improved next season. What can Electronic Arts do to keep people interested in playing traditional, one-on-one multiplayer with real NHL teams?

Update the Rosters More Frequently

NHL 15's Monday-through-Friday updates to Hockey Ultimate Team prove that Electronic Arts is perfectly capable of keeping their NHL rosters accurate. NHL 15, however, has received only two halfhearted ratings updates since its September 9 release. To help put this embarrassing display of post-launch support into perspective, professional goon John Scott has scored more points during the 2014-2015 season (three) than EA's staff has made ratings changes (two). The NHL's numerous injuries and transactions, meanwhile, are being updated at a slightly faster but equally unacceptable pace of once per month.

Nowadays, NBA 2K, Madden NFL, MLB The Show, et al. deliver roster updates at least once a week. There's no reason for NHL's rosters to be lagging this far behind other sports video games. Not in a sport like hockey, where injuries are extremely common, and clubs are constantly reshuffling their lineups and sending players back and forth from minor league affiliates. And especially not when EA's product is the lone piece of officially licensed NHL software on store shelves. If NBA Live, which doesn't even sell half as many units as the NHL series, can afford a partnership with Synergy Sports, then why can't EA Canada partner with a website like Daily Faceoff, to ensure that their rosters remain accurate throughout the season?

Save Users' Favorite Team, Line Pairings, & Team Strategies

If you care about putting your best players on the ice in the situations where they're most likely to succeed, then it will take you about five minutes before the start of every Online Versus game to reset your team's lines and AI behavior. Most of the time though, your opponent will just back out of the matchup screen and cancel the game session before you can get even halfway through fixing your settings. This silliness could be easily avoided if NHL 15 allowed users to permanently save their preferred lines and team strategies, just like the game currently does in its Ultimate Team mode. Additionally, the game already keeps track of the user's "favorite team," so why not start each Online Versus session on that team, to keep players from having to slowly scroll through the entire league just to reselect the same familiar squad?

Give Every Team a Third Unit for Penalty Kills & Power Plays

No NHL coach would tell an exhausted group of skaters to go back onto the ice during special teams situations when he has a handful of refreshed replacements sitting unused on his bench, but that is exactly what happens in many NHL 15 matches, due to the game's artificial limit of two power play/penalty kill units. Adding a third special teams group to every team would keep fatigue from becoming an issue during these pivotal moments.

Fix the Glitch that Forces Wingers to Take Face-Offs

Whenever teams are shorthanded, or are playing 4 vs. 4 hockey, the wingers on every line will get thrown into the face-off circle. This is a well-documented bug that has existed since release day, yet to this date, EA has done nothing to fix it. Patrice Bergeron or Jonathan Toews shouldn't be stuck on the bench while Brad Marchand or Marián Hossa take a key face-off, but that's what happens regularly in NHL 15.

Quitting in the First Minute After a Goal's Been Scored Should Result in a Loss

John Tavares scored 11 seconds into Monday night's game against the New York Rangers, after Cam Talbot misplayed a puck behind his own net. If Tavares' Islanders had been playing NHL 15, then the Rangers could have simply unplugged their Ethernet cable, or exited back to the main menu, and the game would have been wiped from both teams' records, like it had never happened. No online game should reward quitters like this. As soon as a goal is scored, the match should become permanently etched in both users' online records.

Goalies Should be User-Controlled During Shootouts & Penalty Shots

Beating AI goalies on a breakaway is stupidly easy in NHL 15. There are multiple scoring methods -- some shadier than others -- that will work close to 90 percent of the time against the CPU. Giving users direct control over their goaltender is all that it would take to even the odds of stopping a one-on-one encounter at a more reasonable rate.

Allow Guests to Go Online

One of the best ways to convert new players into new owners of a video game is to let newbies play alongside a friend in an online match against strangers. SEGA's Dreamcast let up to four people per system participate in online matches of NFL 2K1, back when consoles were still transmitting data over 56K telephone modems. To this day, the Call of Duty series still allows online guests to split their TV screen in half and join forces with a friend. But for some reason, Electronic Arts decided to prohibit guests from playing online in NHL 15. The only issue the NHL community had with the guest system was one-man teams occasionally getting matched up against multiple players. But the solution to that problem isn't removing the option for guests, it's making the matchfinding system smart enough to pick two teams that have an equal number of players.

Build a Smarter Leaderboard System

Electronic Arts still hasn't figured out how to create a leaderboard system where "games played" isn't the most influential factor. Currently, a user with 31 wins and 3 losses can somehow rank below a player who has 73 wins, 196 regulation losses, and 31 overtime losses. Teams' winning percentage and overall goal differential should be valued much more than the total number of games they've registered.