The pokecheck spamming was not an issue before. You can't play real defense in the NHL games because you cannot control the stick while on defense. In real life, defensemen use their stick to defend everything. That's how you defend. Some people may think the poke check spamming is dumb or whatever, but you just simply need to get better. Everyone in the higher divisions of HUT are INSANELY good at offense, to the point where you need to be able to poke check if you want to defend. You can't just control your defender and hope to stop people from scoring. When on offense / with the puck you have full control of your stick, but the defenders do not, making it completely unfair and imbalanced.
Either make the pokecheck work, or decrease puck control by a lot.