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.
