Hitting is probably something that's hard to get right, imo.
In the game, guys can just squirm around hits with relative ease. In real life, hits are still risky, but guys, by and large, aren't just dodging hits. The average hit in real hockey also isn't as huge and devastating as this game.
You want there to be a good amount of hitting, but you also don't want players to just shutdown plays with ease just by nudging a guy. That's a difficult thing to balance. My only thought would be to make it easier to land hits, but make hits a lot less devastating. Like, most hits thrown in real hockey do land, but they're not these Trouba-style hospitalization hits.