jaymo, take a look at this thread on the EA forums
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/8925121.page

There is a coder there that is answering questions about CCM and doing a bang-up job if I do say so... well worth a read and I'm only on page 6 of 9. One of the big benefits for playing an online CCM is that they don't have to rely on patches for fixes etc. He states in there specifically that there have been several bug fixes that they took care of server-side but for offline they'll have to wait for a patch. One example is a bug that if you trade a player with the same jersey number as one of your existing players, he wouldn't change numbers. Now, online, the new player will get a new number.

That type of thing is fairly impressive IMO that they can change that in days rather than weeks/months. So in that regard, yes, I say push full steam ahead with putting a focus on the online version. It sucks as someone that may not have 100% online connectivity but at the same time, I can certainly see more & more games going that direction, sports or otherwise.