It’s hard to believe that three years ago Casey Mittelstadt was considered one of the best prospects in the league and now there are question marks if he can be any type of impact NHL player. His development plan has been botched from the beginning under Jason Botterill.

Now, there are red flags all over the Minnesota-native that make it hard to imagine that he’ll come close to reaching his potential when he was selected eighth overall back in 2017. Once considered to be one of the prizes of the 2017 class in the top 15, he now appears to be falling behind the pack.

Development Path

Mittelstadt peaked when he put together a strong World Junior performance in 2018 in Buffalo when he was named the tournament’s most valuable player. In hindsight, that may have been the worst thing for him and the Sabres.

As a result of that tournament, his hype began to get out of control. Especially when you look at his freshman season at the University of Minnesota. His D+1 (draft year plus one season) wasn’t anything special with the Gophers. He wasn’t even a point per game player in the NCAA scoring 11 goals and 30 points in 34 games. There were signs that he needed at least another year in college, but the Sabres were desperate for an impact player. Therefore they brought him to the NHL at least a year too early.

They compounded their error by trading away Ryan O’Reilly that offseason and believing that Mittelstadt could handle the load of a second-line center at 19-years-old. Over the past two years, they didn’t necessarily surround him with the best talent. His most common linemates were Conor Sheary, Kyle Okposo, Jimmy Vesey, and Tage Thompson.

These details are important to remember when looking at Mittelstadt’s development because Sabres did very little to help the player. The best thing they did for him over the three years was to send him down to the AHL this past season when he looked overwhelmed again in the NHL.

Falling Behind Peers

When you look back at his draft class, the concerning part is that he’s starting to fall behind peers that were selected around him in 2017. I went a looked at Byron Bader’s NHLe model and looked at the development trajectory of the forwards selected from 6th to 13th overall.

The results were not pleasant for Mittelstadt when placed up against his peers.

Mittelstadt remained mostly flat in NHLe since his draft year while others have shown growth. Only Michael Rasmussen appears to be on a similar trajectory while the other six players have surpassed him.

All of these players from this class have played at least a handful of games in the NHL and AHL. Bader’s model also projects the likelihood of players becoming an NHL player and once again Mittelstadt finds himself at the back of the pack, by a considerable margin.

Pro Production and Impacts

The concerning part is that what we see in Mittelstadt may be the player that they’re going to get with the potential of slight improvement. Going back to college, his production hasn’t been above average in any league he has played in considering his draft status.

Even this past season in the AHL his production levels were not what you would hope. Nine goals and 25 points in 36 games are underwhelming numbers when all things are considered.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first person to scoff at points and put more stock in the underlying numbers of a player’s impact. Well, for Mittelstadt, those underlying numbers are even worse than his production.

As you can see it Micah McCurdy’s isolated impact charts above, the 21-year-old forward has poor impacts at both ends of the ice. With a player that carries his offensive ability you can overlook the bad results in the defensive end of the ice, but his offensive impact has been among the worst in the NHL during his career.

In Evolving Hockey’s RAPM model, he posses the 16th worst shot quality for (xGF/60) rating among all forwards to play at least 500 minutes over the last three years. It also doesn’t work in his favor that he has been given extremely sheltered offensive minutes in the NHL and his numbers are still this poor. According to Natural Stat Trick, he has the fourth-highest offensive-zone start rate among all forwards to play at least 500 minutes at 5 on 5 over the last three years.

Conclusion

There are a lot of red flags surrounding Mittelstadt and at this point, I don’t think he’ll reach his potential coming out of the draft. I see his ceiling as a middle-six winger in the NHL. I don’t believe he can handle to challenges of playing center at the highest level. The sooner the Sabres realize what his new ceiling probably is, the better it may turn out for all parties.

He’s only 21-years-old so there isn’t a need for Kevyn Adams to do everything in his power to move on from Mittelstadt. However, it may be wise for him to see what the trade value around the NHL is for Mittelstadt. If he puts together another underwhelming season in year four and shows no signs of growth, the Sabres could have a player on their hands with almost no value in the league.

Teams often make the mistakes of hanging onto their prospects longer than they should. Adams has no connection to Mittelstadt in the regard that he didn’t pick him. It should give him the ability to make the best decision for the franchise moving forward without any bias on the player.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, Hockeyviz.com, and Hockeyprospecting.com