What do you think of the updates for this year?

I don't play NHL 19 but is Doc Emrick still really weird and annoying in NHL 19 like in the other NHL video games?

Fog of War really makes the scouting side of things a lot more interesting.

I really like the new scouting and fog of war changes.

My wishlist:
KHL and NCAA players: I know it can't happen, but it'd be awesome if they were in the game.
Tournament Mode: I think they used to have this you could play international tournaments or Memorial Cup. Those appear to be gone. You can't even create a tournament yourself.
National Team Pools: The national teams have a preset roster of players to choose from. It'd be better if it was set up like FIFA, where you can add/remove players from within each national pool. You can move players from other rosters, but then you have the problem of not having them with their club team.
Edit Reserve Team Status: if a player is not on an NHL or AHL roster, you can't change (or add) the team that owns their rights.

I do a lot of playing around with rosters and Franchise mode, but I'm pretty pleased overall with the gameplay itself; especially the new engine.

Here are players I've created because they won't be in the game.

Kaprizov
Wahlstrom
Farabee
Tufte
Denisenko
Lockwood
Poehling
McBain
Kravtsov
Bowers
Norris
O'Brien
Wise
Makar
Q. Hughes
Fox
Miller
Perunovich
Fabbro
Tychonick
Peeke
Krys
Sorokin
Shesterkin
Oettinger
Primeau
Woll

Who else should I add? (Not including players that will be on the next roster update; Tkachuk for example).

Not sure if Jack Hughes is in the game, but he would be a good add.

Agreed. I haven't looked at US or Russia-based prospects for next year's draft yet.