Casey Mittelstadt

Last Season

Fifteen goals and 27 assists in 71 games — 42 points, plus-12, at 15:10 a night. Twelve penalty minutes all year.

The Finesse Game

The hands and the vision were always the selling point and they are still the best things about him. He makes plays through traffic at speed and he draws defenders to himself before releasing the puck, which is a skill you either have at 27 or never will.

The shot is secondary and he treats it that way — 80 shots on goal in 71 games, 16 goals from a median distance of 24 feet. He would rather pass, sometimes when he should not.

The Physical Game

Six foot one and 205 and almost entirely uninterested. Twelve penalty minutes in 71 games is a player who is never in a battle, and along the wall he can be simply removed.

That is the reason a top-ten pick has ended up in a middle-six role rather than driving a line.

The Intangibles

Five hundred and nine games and 278 points, which is a real NHL career and a long way short of what the eighth pick in 2017 was supposed to be.

The five-on-five results were the least bad among Boston’s veteran forwards — 48.8 per cent of the expected goals, 43rd percentile — and even that is below the line. He is a skilled player on a team that got outplayed, and he was not one of the ones dragging it down.

Eight points in his last ten. He is what he is now, and what he is has value on the third line.