Imo it's premature to be surprised about the small fraction of ice surface showing melt ponds.
Attached is a gif of SMOS microwave images for each year from 2010 through 2019.
Specifically, the images are yyyy0607_hvnorth_rfi_l1c.png, where yyyy is the year, obtained from
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/smos/png/.
These images are sensitive to melt ponds.
IGNORE THE COLOR LEGEND'S NUMERICAL SCALE & LABEL (the color order progression should be valid though) - DURING THE MELT SEASON THESE ARE NOT LEGITIMATE THICKNESS MEASUREMENTS. Instead, my understanding is that any color other than beige indicates ice that is:
a) thin, ~<50 cm; &/or
b) has concentration well below 100%; &/or
c) has surface liquid water.
In particular, colours other than beige in the ice pack interior are likely to indicate the presence of surface water.
& it is seen that only 4 of the 10 years have extensive melt ponding in the Arctic Basin on 7 June: 2012, 15, 16, and 18.
All of 2010, 11, 13, 14, 17, and now 2019, don't have extensive melt ponding by 7 June.
So the comparisons above with 2012 are not particularly surprising, given that 2012 is one of the 4 years in the data record that has extensive melt ponding on 7 June, while 5 of the 9 previous years on record are similar to 2019 in not displaying extensive melt ponds by 7 June.
P.S. Given the weather forecast, I expect SMOS to show extensive melt ponding, especially on the Russian side, within the next few days.