In addition to the difficulty setting you can turn on or off various options to customize the game. You can decide to enforce offsides, two line passes, icing, etc. or ignore these niceties depending on the level of realism you want. You can also change the frequency of penalties, injuries, and whether there are fights. You can even create and trade players. I added myself to the San Jose Sharks for season.
Game play is fast and action packed.
With checking, quick passes, and a lot of motion this is a fun and fast paced romp. I found that scoring, regardless of period length, seemed to even out to about what you'd expect for a full game. This made the shortest games non-stop goal fests at times, which was fun in a way, but I liked the ten minute periods the best as a compromise between a quick to play game and enough action to keep it interesting all the time. On the ice you have good control. You control one player at a time, and can switch to the player closest to the puck on defense with a single button and automatically control the player with the puck on offense.