Personally, I find any of the default settings horrible. I tried simulation AND hardcore and had a miserable time playing the game on both of them. I ended up playing my BaP on authentic mode PRO level with sliders set to favor human over CPU by quite a bit until I got the hang of things. It quickly became way too easy so I bumped up the slider for making the CPU more difficult to play against and tuned the other sliders down for humans. I didn't see much difference so I bumped it up to All-Star.
My first couple of games didn't feel much different so I evened out all the sliders even more with me only having a slight advantage in checking and shooting accuracy but just barely. I'm still in the CHL and my line seems to be the only line that can score and I'm still managing to score 4-6 goals a game as a team. I put the CPU difficulty slider to the middle setting and now my team plays horrible defense. I keep getting killed with Bad DEF LINE PLAY because my defenders just won't guard the slot at all now. It didn't make the CPU play much better but makes my teammates play dumber on D. I'm still scoring a ton and now so is the CPU. My last 3 games were a 7-4 loss after being ahead 3-1, a 5-4 win and a 5-4 loss in a shootout.
I find it extremely hard to find a good setting for me that feels fair AND realistic without making the rest of my team play dumber. I'm 37 games into the season (27-9-1) and my line has 35,29,and 25 goals each with me having the 25. The next best scorer on my team has 6 goals. Not only is my line just about the only one that can score when I'm not simming, it's also about the only line that gets scored against, meaning all the bad team play falls on me. It's frustrating.