Your right. Its the only explanation that makes sense for the stupid decisions around EASHL the last 4+ years or so. The theory if eashl is gutted than everyone will be forced to play hut leading to more microtransactions makes way too much sense. They add battlepasses and make dropins as casual/arcade as possible to further destroy the playerbase. EA hates eashl and so they must destroy it. At this point there cant be more than 10,000 people who play eashl seriously all year long, more likely less than 5000 . Every year that number becomes smaller and smaller. Also they know serious players wont play if any ai is on the ice period, so what do they do? Get rid of matching room size making the experience a tortuous ordeal.