I have been saying something about a new trade option for a while now. While I would prefer something developed specifically for trade, with being lazy they could use the player conversation framework to create something like that - and unless you offer a shitty trade the AI GM will say let me get back to you in a few days and such too
And maybe you keep the rapid trades of the trade deadline and draft
I think that they need bigger trades to be something that constantly progresses over weeks. I don't think they could pull it off. In real life, GMs sometimes fail to create a market for a player and then it becomes a distraction that hurts both fan morale and player morale so they have to pull the trigger on a deal. Like how Dorion dragged his feet with Karlsson, lost all kinds of leverage, and then had to trade him on the first day of training camp because bringing him back wasn't an option.
Maybe if I am trying to acquire a star, I can choose to leak the trade to Bruce Garrioch, which if successful will lower the value of the star, but if it fails will hurt my relationship with the rival GM and make them refuse to trade the player to me. Stuff like that. I think with where they are going with coaches, the next step would be to have visible GMs for each team with different tendencies, and in the long run even owners, where depending on your credibility and the owners temperament, they might meddle in your team.
Obviously, I should still be able to give up a 4th round pick for a 27 year old 78 overall forward with little work or resistance. Every trade doesn't need to be an odyssey. But if I want to trade for a star, or trade away a star, it should be more of a process.
As far as trade deadline goes, they are going in the right direction, but you can tell they got the barebones down and decided their work was done. The most annoying thing is when you are crafting a trade and you see "asset no longer on team". As if in real life if you were negotiating with Nashville for Ryan O'Reilly, and another team met their price, they wouldn't at least say to you "Toronto made us an offer we're going to accept, unless you are willing to beat it with x y and z pieces. Do you want to make the trade?"
As far as online GM Mode goes, I think they should have kept the classic GM mode in the game as a separate mode until they were prepared to integrate all the new features online. My fear about the introduction of an online GM mode, if it is in fact coming, is that not only will it be incredibly broken with the few changes they have added, but it will prevent them from adding anything new later on because testing and integrating it online will be an additional challenge.
If you ever played the original online GM mode, there were little things that caused the league to break completely. There was a major bug where if a team acquired more unsigned prospects and current year draft picks than their reserve list could handle (50?), the league would completely break at the sim phase right after the draft but before the re-sign, and there would be no way to fix it because the only way to fix it would be to get the player who went over to trade away x number of prospects until they got under 50.
There was also a more common bug where if a GM offered too great of a sum of contracts in cap on July 1st at the same time, rather than the player rejecting the contracts because they have no cap space, the game would send players on that team off into a void. They would disappear for an entire season, and re-appear in free agency the next season. Someone would sign PA Parenteau and Marc Methot and it would cause them to lose Connor McDavid.
I have no confidence in them rebuilding the online GM mode and also improving the game. If you don't think you will play online GM Mode, then it's the last thing you want to seem them add, because if they add it, that probably means any progress for new features in GM mode will halt.
