Good news, everyone!

It turns out that you can indeed re-roll each of your player positions individually by choosing to change 'player type,' for example adjusting from 'offensive defenseman' to 'two way defenseman' or what not, and it won't reset to zero all the other positions. This means I am no longer angry at having separate slots for each winger, because now the bonus of that, which is being able to play around with different setups for winger, is no longer made moot by having to re-roll every position whenever you want to re-roll. Awesome! More to the point, finally, EASHL guys!
And so I re-rolled my offensive defenseman, and he is still a 72, but I do think I am happier with him now. And my forwards are still all 76. Go figure. I wish I could give Vader my Center and he could show me how he achieves a 79 with his defenseman roll! It's so hard not to get obsessed with the 'overall,' but surely, that number isn't really the end-all, be-all, is it? Hmmmm....