Somethings are amazing, others seem to be forgotten.
Even with the sliders at even, or slightly biased towards the CPU, I can score at will. The AI does not pick-up on the cross-crease pass, so it is almost a given that you will score every time. Otherwise, gameplay is the most realistic to date. I still enjoy playing, and I really like the custom music settings, but it still feels like I downloaded a small upgrade to last year's game, which felt like a slight upgrade to the previous year, which felt like... I feel ripped off for having to spend over $70 (after tax) to buy something that is only slightly better than the previous versions, which I already own.
The forgotten:
For some reason the programmers still pay almost ZERO attention to the creation zones. They list dozens of ridiculous team names, and still only have a handful of logos, almost none of which match the names. You cannot design your own arena scheme, like you could in earlier versions. You cannot re-locate an existing NHL team, and maintain their name, logos, jerseys, etc. The create-a-player hair and facial hair selections are limited and lame, and so on.
You would think that with the seemingly open-ended storage space of a Blu-Ray would allow them to maximize the creativity of the users by giving them free reign in the creation modes.