As an outsider from all of this, my take on poke-check mashing is that it's the most frustrating part of playing online against people. I use poke-check too, but I hit the button ONCE as the opportunities present themselves. Out of every 10 attempts, I would estimate that 4 times it's successful, 5 times it fails and 1 time I get a penalty.
I have no idea what type or strategy you use, but if it consists of spamming the poke-check button multiple times whenever your player is near the puck-carrier, it's "mashing the poke-check button" and it sucks the fun out the game for the other person.
As mentioned earlier, I'm not involved in this league anymore, but I do play the game online every single night and have a pile of online experience against random people. I'm not saying that button-mashing was happening, but I am saying that it's pretty easy to spot, and it has nothing to do with positional strategy. If you're skating up the ice and the player in front of you is sticking his stick out repeatedly, it's a pretty clear indication that at least one button is getting mashed.
Putting everything else aside, I would never quit a game or a series over it. Mashers can be beaten by just moving the puck into open ice. Get in the slot and bang around to knock the puck loose and get a few rebounds. Shoot the puck from everywhere. Dump it in and hammer them against the boards. Individual player stats will drop as they get "intimidated" by big hits. Their passing will become worse, their shots will start missing the net, they'll cough the puck up more. On top of that, the real button-mashers usually don't know how to react once you stop skating directly into their players. Change your game and force them to try to play hockey against you. Read and react, etc.
Edit: Holy crap, am I ever late to the party. I thought I was responding to something that just happened, but it appears I simply just didn't bother going to the last page in the thread... Such a noob am I.
