This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Casey Mittelstadt
Colorado Avalanche Center
Fifty-seven points and a career minus-45 — Colorado paid a first-round defenceman to find out which of those is the truth.
| 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 | BUF/COL | 80 | 18 | 39 | 57 | +10 | 32 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 127 | 14.2 | 17:44 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 357 | 66 | 130 | 196 | -45 | 82 | 16 | 2 | 8 | 563 | 11.7 | 15:28 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
Eighty games, 18 goals and 39 assists for 57 points with 3 on the power play, 17:44 a night and plus-10. He converted 14.17 per cent of 127 shots.
He took 53.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,157 minutes, the 77th percentile, and his ice went 68-53 against an expectation of 50.81-44.77. Colorado sent Bowen Byram to Buffalo for him at the deadline, which is a first-round defenceman for a second-line centre, and the numbers since do not yet settle whether it was a good trade.
The Finesse Game
He is a passer first. Thirty-nine assists in 80 games and 130 in 357 across his career, and the puck is moved late and into space rather than to a stick.
One hundred and twenty-seven shots at a median of 23 feet with 40 per cent from inside 20, converted at 14.17 per cent against a career 11.72. The shot is better than his reputation and he does not take enough of them — 127 in 80 games at 17:44 a night is a low volume for a second-line centre.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 205 and does not play a physical game. Thirty-two penalty minutes in 80 games is an ordinary rate and there is nothing in it.
He does not win the wall and he is not the man sent out to defend a lead. A career minus-45 across 357 games is partly Buffalo and partly the defensive detail, and Colorado is about to find out the split.
The Intangibles
Eighth overall in 2017 out of Eden Prairie, six seasons in Buffalo where he was written off twice, and now the second-line centre on a club that wins fifty games.
He is 25 and this is the first time he has played behind a genuine first-line centre. The 57 points came in the season the trade happened, which makes them the hardest points on the roster to read.
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.
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He is a passer first. Thirty-nine assists in 80 games and 130 in 357 across his career, and the puck is moved late and into space rather than to a stick.”
“He does not win the wall and he is not the man sent out to defend a lead.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,157 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.2%
- 77th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.1%
- 73rd 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: 68 for, 53 against. Expected: 50.8 and 44.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 60 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 49th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.05 a game
- Distance
- 2.82 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.6 mph
- 42nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2023-24 with BUF · 908 minutes at five-on-five
- Alex Tuch30%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- COL took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.2% — 0.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,157 minutes at five-on-five — 78th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rasmus Dahlin | 52.5% | 53.6% | 50.9% |
| Jordan Greenway | 52.2% | 53.5% | 45.8% |
| Jeff Skinner | 53.1% | 53.2% | 46.5% |
52.5% together, 53.6% for him apart and 50.9% for Dahlin apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
172 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.