I think your right about this. I think its things like this that make everybody's blood boil over at EA and the Dev team. We all get mad at the game for things like the AI, Rosters, missing stuff and other gameplay elements and rightfully so, but at the end of the day the Devs probably feel they released a good product and we are just a handful of malcontents. They can probably make an argument or an excuse for anything we want to complain about and they may even be right on a few things. That said when you have lingering bugs and flat out malfunctions that also existed and went unfixed in the game the previous year;
Stat bar like mentioned above
Sliders changing on their own
Roster Crashing during editing
Goalie gear changes not saving
4th liners going out as your extra attacker despite changing them
etc.....as I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out, it becomes impossible to defend. I would have to believe they know about these things and just don't address it. This lends credence to those of us who feel they just don't care about the offline community anymore. Hopefully a patch addresses this stuff but it didn't last year and soon, as we near December, we will approach the point of no more patching and the game is what it is.