2022-23 Surprises: Casey Mittelstadt fuels Buffalo Sabres
Buffalo Sabres center Casey Mittelstadt, after five seasons of headaches, finally got it together in 2022-23, performing better than we all expected.
In 2022-23, Buffalo Sabres forward Casey Mittelstadt enjoyed his best season, and it wasn’t even much of a contest. By the end of the year, he had 59 points, 15 goals, and 44 assists, good for 0.719 points per game.
This was a stark contrast over the previous year, when he scored just 19 in 40 contests, or 0.45 points per game. Mittelstadt, who also struggled with injuries over his entire career, was the only player on the Sabres to play in all 82 matchups, and he seemed to get even better as the year progressed, refusing to let the wear and tear of such a long season bring him down.
But his 2022-23 season didn’t start off on a high note. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that I wrote a piece lobbying for head coach Don Granato to put him in the press box. He committed eight giveaways in Buffalo’s first three contests, and it wasn’t until roughly mid-December did we start seeing consistent output from the former first round pick.
Buffalo Sabres saw a surprise season from Casey Mittelstadt
In his first 26 games, Mittelstadt had just 13 points. And while this more than put him on pace for a career high, it also would have landed him with roughly 41 across an 82 game season, not much better than the pace he was on in 2021-22 when he finally got healthy.
In the final 56 contests, Mittelstadt went on a tear, scoring 46 points, good for 0.821 per game in that span. It completed a season when the odds were growing that someone like Matt Savoie or Jiri Kulich would eventually replace Mittelstadt, but following such high output, Victor Olofsson is the one who will likely go elsewhere for 2023-24.
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Now the question bodes, Can Mittelstadt do this again? Fortunately for Sabres fans, we only need to wait a few months before the puck drops in October. Just over five months at the time of this writing.
(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)