Players tell you all the time that draft status is just a label. Once you enter the NHL, you sink or swim based on your talent, and not where you were taken.
But it's a little different for high picks. When you're a first-rounder, especially a Top-10er, there's expectation that never goes away.
That's where Casey Mittelstadt is right now. He could just be another player struggling to get out of the doldrums. Every team has a few at any point in the season. But we're now more than five years past when the Sabres took him at No. 8 overall in 2017 at Chicago's United Center. There's star expectations there. Just look where Dylan Cozens (No. 7 in 2019) is headed.
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Now, look where Mittelstadt is. He has become the Sabres' social media piñata. Lots of folks wonder why he's not sampling the press box popcorn with yours truly. Coach Don Granato moved Mittelstadt from center to wing starting with Thursday's game against Colorado to try to take some of the bubbling pressure off of him, and it didn't help.
Sunday's game against San Jose was another poor showing. On a night when the team scored six goals, had 38 shots on goal and 62 shot attempts, Mittelstadt and similarly struggling linemate Victor Olofsson were both minus-2 and had no shots on goal. Mittelstadt played 10:29 and didn't even have a single shot attempt. Olofsson played 11:05 and had two attempts.
Granato flipped two centers in that game. Mittelstadt and Olofsson are now playing with Tyson Jost, whom Mittelstadt said brings speed to the forecheck that should help the line. We'll see.
"The biggest thing for me is you've just got to keep working," Mittelstadt said after practice Tuesday. "Look at everything you do, have some discipline in things you do away from the rink and at the rink. Hard work and discipline always overcomes it to me. Even if you have a rough stretch, stick to your guns and stick to your work ethic."
Granato said Mittelstadt, like close friend Rasmus Dahlin, is notoriously hard on himself in times of trouble.
Sabres coaches were raving about how Dylan Cozens, Jack Quinn and JJ Peterka use speed, skill and chemistry to make plays you wouldn’t expect out of a line featuring three forwards under the age of 22.
"Some of the most competitive people get frustrated fast, and that's just unfortunate," Granato said. "The negative to being ultra-competitive is you get very frustrated very fast, and that, I believe, is complicating things for him right now. You get in your own head a little bit. You want it faster, quicker, sooner."
"It's hard, something I'm still working on, for sure," Mittelstadt admitted. "It's obviously been a tough stretch for me, but at the same time, I think I've done a good job at kind of distracting my mind. I wake up every day and feel like it's going to turn here, eventually."
Mittelstadt has five goals and eight assists on the season, but only one goal and two assists at even strength. On a team that's second in the NHL in goals, he has the worst rating among the forwards at minus-11. And his ice time has shrunk to under 11 minutes three times in the last four games.
It is easy to forget that Mittelstadt opened last season as the Sabres' No. 1 center after a great training camp, but a lower-body injury in the season opener against Montreal eventually required surgery and set him back most of the year. He played just 40 games with six goals and 19 points. This year, frankly, he looks slow, as though he's still hurting. He insists that's not the case.
"Physically, I feel great. That's probably been the most frustrating thing for me right now," he said. "I feel healthy, body feels great. I'm happy with the way my legs feel and the way my body's working, so now it's just a matter of figuring it all out."
In the rear view mirror, the 2017 draft looks super hard to figure.
Mittelstadt ranks 10th in the class in games (220) and 12th in goals (38), assists (55) and points (93). Not terrible, really, but certainly not as much as was expected from a kid who was a dynamo for Team USA at the World Juniors.
In his new book, "Matthew Barnaby Unfiltered", the 49-year-old takes us inside his 14-year career and relives plenty of moments from the Sabres' wild times of the late 90s.
But he's not the only one to struggle from the Class of '17. No. 2 overall pick Nolan Patrick (Philadelphia) flamed out due to concussion troubles, and it is unknown if he'll ever return to Vegas. Lots of first-round picks from that year are still trying to get their footing.
New Jersey got its captain at No. 1 in Nico Hischier, and Dallas got a blueline stalwart at No. 3 in Miro Heiskanen. The franchise picks were actually at No. 4 (Colorado's Cale Makar) and No. 5 (Vancouver's Elias Pettersson). But the real winner has proven to be Dallas.
Showing how it's not all about getting a Top-3 pick, the Stars took starting goaltender Jake Oettinger at No. 26 and got NHL goal leader Jason Robertson and No. 39 – two picks after Sabres general manager Jason Botterill made an all-time franchise gaffe by taking Swedish center Marcus Davidsson at No. 37. Davidsson, who battled injuries and never signed with Buffalo, is the only one of the top 40 selections from 2017 to not play in the NHL.
Mittelstadt played only 34 games at the University of Minnesota and probably needed another season. He could have used time in Rochester, too, but that didn't come until the 2019-20 season, when he had already played 100 NHL games.
The Botterill regime was under pressure – from ownership, fans and even from Jack Eichel – to get things right fast. Mittelstadt's slipshod development was clearly collateral damage. You see how differently the Kevyn Adams-era Sabres have handled the likes of Cozens, JJ Peterka, Jack Quinn and others.
Buffalo is 7-3-1 with Samuelsson in the lineup this season, compared to 3-10 without him. He and Rasmus Dahlin have formed a formidable top defense pair that’s learning to slow the top players in the world.
Mittelstadt and the Sabres can't get that time back. Olofsson is a former seventh-round pick who has two 20-goal seasons, but is mostly a power play guy. Mittelstadt makes $2.5 million a year through next season and was supposed to be a pillar down the middle.
When is that going to happen?
"This is making them pay attention to details of the game, that their skill has allowed them prior to this to just mask," Granato said. "And now they have to pay attention to those details to pull themselves out of this. It's not a quick fix, in that regard. They could go on and score three goals, but that doesn't mean that's fixed."
