Unplayable scripted garbage!!!

You could always lower the difficulty some. I've not really played those modes at all. I know if you jump on the Operation Sports forums people usually create A.i. sliders and difficulty settings to give you a better representation of hockey. Playing online is far from perfect too but I do find playing against real humans more rewarding. If nothing else they at least skate differently and take different lines than you're familiar with the A.I. taking. Of course you will have to deal with people taking advantage of everything EA has failed to fix. L2 stuff.. auto breakaways.. broken Xfactors, 0 creativity as far as builds because the EA builds and hitting.. if you can get over all of that it can be fun. Of course there is also HUT too and with a salary cap it's better imo. It can be played fully against cpu but it also has online games that you can be rewarded for playing if you choose to do that. Probably a good halfway point for you. Challenges would have you playing against all sorts of diff difficulties. I really hate the randomness of packs and it feels like a giant cheap gimmick but apart from packs I've enjoyed it.