I hope this is just an oversight by EA and will be fixed soon. However, there is a temporary solution. You need to change the console language. In my case, changing to English helped, but I know that it works by changing to other European languages, such as Czech. I don't know where your friends are from, but if they are from the Czechia, for example, they will have centimeters and kilograms.
I play from Poland and the console language is Polish and surprisingly I have pounds and inches in the game, even though in all previous NHLs I had centimeters and kilograms. Before the game you need to change the language to English, and after finishing the game return to Polish.
It is worth noting that there must be something wrong with NHL 25, because even when starting the game there is no option to choose the game language (screen with flags).
