Welcome to the community @tinpanalley. Would you be interested in playing online seasons mode with a group of 20-25 real GM's. We do an entry draft every season, manage the salary cap, and play online against each other. Most of our games are modded to today's uniforms, arenas, teams, etc.
If you are interested let me know and we can get you setup, the season is just starting.
As for your questions...
thebreakaway used to be a huge NHL09 modding community, but has since shut down, taking along with it all the great mods that were posted there. Most are slowly coming back on this community, and another Russian site called Splinterice. These two sites are more geared toward European leagues, but there is some very good NHL mods on here too.
I have a full NHL package put together for our online seasons league, called VHA (Virtual Hockey Association).
Looking forward to hearing from you.