I switched to Difficult, and it's pretty much what I expected. I can still score fairly well, but the opponents are now impossible to knock off the puck, faster, and you can't even poke check them anymore.
You thought Peter Forsberg was bad? I can't even knock over Daniel Sedin with Pronger. Yet they breathe heavily on me and I lose the puck. I'll give it more of a try, but it's hard to play defense when you're giving up 3-0 rushes (and that's while trying to play stay at home defense) because your guys now move slower, and their guys move faster.
I get a ton of tripping penalties trying to poke check, and if I hit them they kind of wobble, but don't lose the puck. Unfortunately though, my teammate AI does something stupid usually and leaves the guy in front of the net wide open.
I've lost all 3 games on difficult so far, 1 in regulation and 2 in OT.
My best game at Medium was an 11-0 drubbing of Detroit. Peca was a 2 PPG man, I was a 2.5 PPG man, and I had the top 5 players in the overall points list. (Smyth, Me, Peca, Dvorak, Torres....Hemsky was in the top 10 though). Peca has like 12 SHG so far, and I'm like 30 games in. I think I've scored more SHG than I have let in PPG