Casey Mittelstadt is the picture of persistence paying off. After toiling with the hapless Buffalo Sabres for six seasons, Mittelstadt was traded to the Colorado Avalanche at last year’s deadline. He impressed enough to earn a three-year contract extension from the Avs in June, and now the 25-year-old center is primed to put up one of the best seasons of his career.
Filling the center position on the second line, Mittelstadt might not be a household name. However, Avalanche fans know how important that position has been to their team’s success, and they’re looking forward to seeing what he can do over a full season. Here’s a look at how Mittelstadt is set up to have a breakout campaign for the Avalanche in 2024-25:
Mittelstadt Fills Crucial Role for Avs
Since hoisting the Stanley Cup in 2022, the Avalanche have been looking for a second-line center. Nazem Kadri left for a lucrative contract with the Calgary Flames following that season, and the Avs tried to cobble together a solution with multiple players. J.T. Compher, Evan Rodrigues, and Alex Newhook tried to fill the role in 2022-23 with mixed results. An indication of how that experiment went none of the three are on the team anymore.
Colorado pulled off trades for Ryan Johansen and Ross Colton to fill the gap ahead of last season. The result was even more inconsistency. Enter Mittelstadt. The Avalanche had to give up a promising young defenseman in Bowen Byram, but Mittelstadt stepped right in and immediately looked like the solution to Colorado’s problems. He tallied five points in his first six games and became a fixture for the team during their playoff run.
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Mittelstadt scored nine points – including six assists – in the team’s 11 postseason games in 2024 and was integral to their five-game thrashing of the Winnipeg Jets in the first round. Five of his assists came in that series – including a three-assist night in Colorado’s 6-2 victory in Game 3. Most importantly, he showed that he can be impactful as the second-line center. After posting just under 16 minutes per game in his 18 regular-season contests with the Avs, he averaged nearly 17.5 minutes per game in the playoffs, continuing to earn coach Jared Bednar’s trust – and even more playing time could be coming in 2024-25.
Mittelstadt in a Perfect Situation
Entering his eighth NHL season, Mittelstadt has never posted a 20-goal campaign and has never hit 60 points. The closest he came was in 2022-23 when he racked up 59 points behind 44 assists. His career high for goals in a season came in 2023-24 when he netted 18 goals between Buffalo and Colorado. While the Sabres are trying to build something – and have some great building blocks in Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin – the Avalanche have a lot more offensive firepower.
Mittelstadt is coming from a tough offensive situation in Buffalo to a Colorado team that is flourishing thanks to its depth. In his first four seasons in Buffalo, the Sabres hit 200 goals in a season just once. The scoring has picked up the last three seasons, but the team still never came close to the playoffs – Buffalo never accumulated more than 84 points in the standings in any of his six-plus seasons there. To put that in perspective, the Avalanche have had just one season with fewer than 90 points over that stretch – including three 100-plus points in the last three seasons. They’ve also only scored fewer than 200 goals once over that span. That was the shortened 2020-21 season with 56 games, and the Avs led the NHL with 197 goals.
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By getting in a prime scoring position on the second line, Mittelstadt’s numbers have nowhere to go but up. He’ll likely start the season centering Artturi Lehkonen and Nikolai Kovalenko on that second line, but that could change if Gabriel Landeskog or Valeri Nichushkin return. Additionally, the Avalanche like to put superstar Nathan MacKinnon back at the point with Cale Makar on the power play, meaning Mittelstadt should get quality minutes with the man advantage, too. All of that should add up to increased production as Mittelstadt skates into his prime.
Predicting Mittelstadt’s Production
He’s only missed two games over the past two seasons, so his durability hasn’t been in question. If Mittelstadt can stay healthy, there is a good chance he will set career bests in all of the important offensive categories. He played a lot with Lehkonen to close out last season, and that familiarity should help. If Landeskog can successfully return to form after missing the last two seasons, that would push Jonathan Drouin down to the second line. The trio of Mittelstadt, Drouin, and Lehkonen played in just six games together last season but managed four goals.
Add in the extra power-play time, and Mittlestadt is set up for a big scoring season. He should blast his way well past his career high of 18 goals, and his first 20-goal campaign is likely on the horizon. He should also have a shot to close in around 50 assists, which would put him amongst the leaders on the team. Putting those numbers together would put him around 70 points for the season – which would have ranked fourth on the Avs in 2023-24. To put it in another perspective, Kadri was third on the team in scoring with 87 points in 2021-22.
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If Mittelstadt can get anywhere close to 87 points, look out. That would put the Avalanche in some even deadlier offensive territory than they already are. Remember, Mittelstadt had played with the same group for most of his six-plus years in Buffalo. Even though he has been fairly sharp in his brief time with the Avalanche, there was still an obvious learning curve in getting used to Bednar’s system as well as his teammates. If he got over that hump this offseason, 2024-25 could be a real breakout season for Mittlestadt. That’s exactly what Colorado needs from him, and he looks poised to deliver.
