This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Casey Mittelstadt
Buffalo Sabres Center
Forty-four assists in a sixth season, from a player the club had almost given up on.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | BUF | 6 | 1 | 4 | 5 | +1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 11.1 | 14:01 |
| 2018-19 | BUF | 77 | 12 | 13 | 25 | -19 | 10 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 118 | 10.2 | 13:27 |
| 2019-20 | BUF | 31 | 4 | 5 | 9 | -5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 34 | 11.8 | 12:46 |
| 2020-21 | BUF | 41 | 10 | 12 | 22 | -10 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 61 | 16.4 | 15:53 |
| 2021-22 | BUF | 40 | 6 | 13 | 19 | -14 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 79 | 7.6 | 16:07 |
| 2022-23 | BUF | 82 | 15 | 44 | 59 | -8 | 22 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 135 | 11.1 | 15:44 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 277 | 48 | 91 | 139 | -55 | 50 | 13 | 2 | 7 | 436 | 11.0 | 14:48 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
15 goals and 44 assists in 82 games — 59 points, at 15:44 a night, minus-8, with 4 power-play goals and a shorthanded goal on 135 shots, converting at 11.11 per cent, and 22 penalty minutes.
It nearly doubled his previous career best and it came in his first fully healthy season. 49.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,068 minutes, the 47th percentile; his ice went 54-54 against an expectation of 46.63-47.69, so the result was slightly ahead of the chances at both ends.
The Finesse Game
135 attempts at a median of 26 feet, 37 per cent from inside 20, off an 88.8 mph shot at the 37th percentile.
Forty-four assists on fifteen goals is the giveaway: this is a distributor. He holds the puck through the first check and finds the man arriving late, and 91 career assists against 48 goals says the shape has been there all along even when the production was not.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 205 and he plays a soft game — 50 penalty minutes in 277 career games, and he is not going to win a puck he has to fight for.
The skating is genuinely good: 22.6 mph at the 67th percentile with 1.1 bursts a game at the 58th. He is quick enough to buy himself the half-second the passing needs, which is the whole basis of the game.
The Intangibles
Eighth overall in 2017, out of Minnesota, and five seasons of being the cautionary tale about drafting a highly skilled forward who does not compete — demoted to the American League and written off before he turned 24.
He is 24. Fifty-nine points is the first real evidence that the player scouts saw is in there, and Buffalo’s centre depth now looks like a genuine strength rather than a hope — which is a sentence nobody in this city has been able to write for a decade.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
3 of his 15 goals late or in overtime, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He holds the puck through the first check and finds the man arriving late”
“he plays a soft game — 50 penalty minutes in 277 career games, and he is not going to win a puck he has to fight for”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,068 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.4%
- 47th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.4%
- 64th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 54 against. Expected: 46.6 and 47.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1068 minutes at five-on-five
- Tyson Jost28%
- Alex Tuch20%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 0.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 1,068 minutes at five-on-five — 66th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Victor Olofsson | 50.2% | 48.8% | 41.2% |
| Owen Power | 49.9% | 49.1% | 49.1% |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 54.8% | 46.1% | 53.2% |
50.2% together, 48.8% for him apart and 41.2% for Olofsson apart. Olofsson was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Olofsson than for him.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
175 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.