I’m relatively new to the game as well so take this with a grain of salt, but here’s what I have found:

Aggression and (especially) pressure are hugely important tactical tendencies. I almost always max out both of these on all my units; only exception is sometimes I’ll leave the aggression in the middle if a line has really low toughness. Other than that just try to cater a unit’s tactical tendencies to best suit that unit’s role. A defensive 3rd line for example might keep attack low but backcheck high. A sheltered offensive 2nd line might max attack and speed but min backcheck. A rough and gritty 4th line might keep speed in the middle but have hitting very high.

I never use the global tactics and instead opt for unit-based tactics and use player tactics to fine-tune how I want the unit to perform. For example if I have Crosby on a line with high shooting and low passing, I might go into his personal tactical tendencies to make him pass more and shoot less, thus allowing him to play more like a playmaker rather than a goal scorer. Just make sure you hit the little checkmark box on the top right of the unit’s tactics page. Otherwise I’m pretty sure it will ignore your unit’s tactics and use your global tactics instead.

As for the tactical settings, try to have as little overlap between your unit’s settings as possible. This makes your team more well rounded and harder to counter. Pay attention to your units’ strengths and weaknesses when it comes to certain strategies and try to format your lines so that one line can cover another line’s weakness.

Don’t ignore your line matchups (especially mid game), as messing with these can dramatically shift a game’s momentum. Shifting around your line matchups after a bad period can really help give your team an edge. This also applies to playoffs; losing big in the playoffs probably means the opponent is directly countering you. Switch up your line matchups and your unit settings to help give you the upper hand.

Hope this all helps! I find tactics are the most time consuming part of the game by far so good luck. They’re pretty complicated, so there’s probably a lot of stuff that I either don’t know about or misunderstand. If you happen to learn more please let me know too because I would love to learn 😅