So I'm on my 10th season with my Pro in NHL 22 and there's definitely some good and bad.
The worst is that every interaction has the player and the other person look angry, no matter what the meeting is about. "Congrats, we've made you captain of the team!" the coach says as he waves his clipboard in the air and stomps off angrily. Ridiculous, how does this crap get through QA?
There are storylines that go over years, so that's been interesting. A few more interactions, some new choices. A decent plus but still nothing terribly exciting.
I do get annoyed quite often when I'm simming through some games and the coach demands that I win the next game, because you know, it's all up to me!
Another big problem that I've noticed is that sometimes you get multiple press conferences for the exact same thing, one after another on the same day. This becomes a bit of an issue if you failed to reach a goal, as you get multiple penalties. Not that big a deal though, as it's ridiculously easy to fill up the meters to 10,000 anyway. They changed it from 1000 last year, but they could probably change it to 100,000 and it wouldn't really matter, it's so easy to fill. So that's another issue.
I keep getting asked about my Calder rivals, even at year 10.....
The gameplay itself is a big plus, it feels more realistic to me, so I'm pretty happy with that.
Contracts are still the same old "here, choose between these 2 teams". There's nothing added and it's extremely disappointing.
Overall, I'd say it's a small step in the right direction, but there's still a long way to go.
Edit: Oh yeah, after winning my second straight Stanley Cup with over 140 points in each season, I got a nice segment about how it was unfortunate that I didn't appear to be the Franchise Cornerstone that they thought I was going to be. That was nice...