HUT online seasons (not competitive seasons) can be played in co-op with friend against other people like in NHL 18.
And I agree jabessette totally with you that playing co-op without position lock makes the playing almost impossible, because of the randomness of AI players turning to human controlled players.
In past generations, I have mostly played HUT in co-op with my friend so that my friend has been locked as LW and I have controlled all the players and this lack of position lock ruins the HUT for us.
The position lock should not have been totally removed, it should have been modified so that it has a precondition that at least one of the players has to play without position lock. That would have solved the problem of abusing the position lock (all the players use position lock and take advantage of the AI), but would not have ruined the game mode for fair gamers like me and my friend.