Yes. Last year they removed the option to prevent players from “gaming” the system and exploiting the coaching tendencies. While this did make choosing coaches matter more, because you are locked in to their strategies it also created a lot of problems:
1) they finally added new PP and PK strategies that are used in todays modern NHL. The 1-3-1 powerplay and the 1-1-2 penalty kill (“the wedge). The problem was that when hiring and firing coaches your line strategies would still be stuck on whoever the coach was when you started the franchise. They released a patch that fixed this, but almost completely removed the 1-3-1 and 1-1-2 from the game. I started about 10 franchises since release to see if this was fixed and unfortunately only about 3-4 teams generate with the 1-3-1 powerplay or 1-1-2 PK, and it’s almost never your user controlled team. 95% of the teams are using the 1-3-1 these days for powerplay but it is actually the least commonly used powerplay in franchise. Also the umbrella seems to be completely removed from franchise play as a generated powerplay strategy. This was a very useful strategy if you wanted to have a lineup with good scoring heavy power forwards and perimeter shooters mixed in. As of right now 80% of the teams use overload as their powerplay strategy which is completely unrealistic. The Los Angeles kings used a version of the overload (with 1-3-1 elements mixed in) on their power play last night against Colorado but it’s way to common in franchise mode and is the preferred strategy of most balanced, and offensive coaches
2) It also stuck us with having coaching styles that will always generate the same every time you start a franchise, and are based off the systems teams we’re running 2 years ago. For instance every time you start a Nashville predators franchise you will have a defensive style coach (there is zero variance). The problem is Nashville recently switched to an offensive style coach in Andrew Burnette. So your coaches play style will never match the current team in real life. So if an NHL team moved to a more faster skill based system, but last year they were a defensive team, you will have players at the very start of your franchise that don’t match your system bringing your ratings down.
It’s a great feature and if implemented properly would make franchise feel alive. Unfortunately it really needs to be fleshed out and made to work more properly otherwise your fighting franchise tooth and nail to get a good experience. Also, if they are going to lock coaching strategies I am fine with it. But at least give us the ability to pick what type of style and coaching attributes, strategies, and line preferences we can start with. Something like a blank slate, with 200 attribute points to assign to coaching skills as we see fit to keep players from gaming the system