From my experience playing franchise mode - knowledge that I can remember going back to NHL 21 or 20 - if you play all of your games in your franchise and seem to run 6 minutes or below the penalties seem to be less to non existent. Sadly, this amount of penalties is actually better then it was in games like NHL 23 and below.
For NHL 25 (which is better then prior games) I can go multiple games where myself or the AI doesn't take a penalty and then have a rare game where there is a few penalties on both sides (to me it seems to very RNG in this circumstance). The 2 penalties I find they call are slashing and cross check (there is little to no variety either - I fully believe that penalties like high stick/double minor high stick, any obstruction call, delay of game don't even exist in the game)
If you SIM only in franchise at 20 minute periods then there is no direct issue with penalties so it has to do with playing games and the less time but to this date I have not found a way to fix it (I have raised sliders but no affect was made).
I have just learned to not take penalties as much so at least its even on both sides not getting a man advantage.
Yeah, I wanted to play Franchise Mode, and play the games, but if the stats are NOT going to be comparable to the rest of the league, I don't see the point.
Now, I'm playing on Superstar with 6 minute periods. Shots and goals seem to be about right, However, there's barely any powerplays (either way) and Hits are insanely high. I will probably have 20 players leading in Hits a few games in.
I am enjoying franchise mode on a whole this year as at least they added some cool stuff into it. I also able to have close stats on a game to game basis. My team goalie stats are fairly on par too for GAA (S% is also another broken stat when playing a reduced time for games - also been a issue for a long as I can remember). I do see that points and goals are too high even on med level - small (outside of the games I play against the AI - but I'm not sure how bad it is overall.
I tend to also have a player closer to the top for the hits leader but even with the massive hits that happen in games (NHL 25 and 24) the only penalty that seems to be called 10% of the time is charging.
The 3 penalties I have seen in a full 82 game season for my franchise mode were (charging, cross check, slashing and rare times tripping) - I'd say for my whole team last season I got 54 penalties called on the AI (pp chances for me) - which even it close to 1 penalty per game let alone 2.
Just change the sliders, works for me, ensure you have rules penalty set at 4 and cpu and cpu teammates set to 90 at least.
So, will setting the Penalty slider from 3 to 4 effect the sim stats in Franchise. That is, will the league on average have higher PP totals by season's end? Or does that setting just effect in-game variables?
I play most of my games but the odd ones I do sim i see plenty of pens both ways. When playing sometimes 4 each sometimes opposition gets 4 or 5 sometimes I have to draw pens, sometimes when I'm under pressure I end up giving quite a few away, it's a good mix and I'm pleased overall, I'm seeing a really good mix of different types of pens.
