"EASHL practice mode
You’ve been heard! NHL 21 brings back one of the most requested features for the competitive community. There are now a free skate and team practice mode in EASHL, where you can either test out your builds on an open sheet of ice or play together with you teammates against an AI opponent to sort out various strategies and set plays. In an open practice, teammates can shoot against either a CPU or human goalie."
That's great. Now they can remove it for next year and bring it as a new feature ~6 years from now.
GM Connected is never coming back. It doesn't have purchasable content and eats away the precious HUT cash generator. Just looking at those purchase options tells everything one needs to know about the franchise.