I'll give my thoughts as somebody who hasn't been a very active member of this community in a few years, mostly since I've only had one season of hockey in all of high school; and putting aside the pandemic for a second, the amount of information on new products has decreased substantially even since I joined MSH. This site has also lived through a transformation of the internet - or it at least seems that way to me because I'm young enough to have never really experienced the internet before 2010 or so - where sleuthing on internet forums is replaced with brands wanting to get ahead of everything and limiting what makes its way out. Everyone's already stated that the amount of genuinely novel innovation in hockey has decreased substantially, which I agree with, and you can only really debate the merits of what curve to use so much (and I would know). This community is definitely still has a lot of knowledge and is really closely knit, there's just less new stuff to apply that knowledge to without disrespecting manufacturers.
Just my take, I still enjoy visiting here and hopefully I'll finally be able to go to a MSH event at some point.