48.0 xG% at 5v5
-3.15 rel xG%
I'm not saying he was terrible in that stretch, he just wasn't very good. Especially compared to how he was playing, which is my point.
Disagree. By the eye test Casey was better than Nemec in that span. His underlying numbers were great when he wasn't being with Nemec, though neither sample was really large enough to draw conclusions.
Don't disagree necessarily, but a lot of his issues we saw this year weren't dissimilar to some of the issues I was noticing at the end of last year, but they were just amplified to the extreme this year.
Nemec was imo being used as as our number 1 Dman through that span (last year in those 16 games, at least in terms of EV usage), whereas Casey was heavily heavily sheltered in an offensive role this year. Slowing down in the role of a number 1 dman with a new partner every night and a new coach as a 19 year old doesn't give me any cause for concern tbh.
He had an overall excellent season when it mattered.
I wasn't all that impressed by Casey tbh. I think shiny new toy syndrome had everyone keying on on basically every remotely positive thing he did out there. I also think the ridiculous goaltending he got behind him covered for a TON of his mistakes/issues defensively.
His numbers away from Nemec are carried by the final game he played, in which he was being sheltered more than Kurtis MacDermid is. 6 minutes, all offensive scenarios, all against the opposing teams depth, all being babysat by Siegs. I didn't watch that game and come away with the conclusion that he's ready for the big show.
Give Casey this year and next in the AHL. I'm sure guys will get injured at some point, and you bring him up then to see how he's developed and handles the NHL again. He 100% has the talent to potentially grab a chokehold on that, and worst case he will run a PP somewhere in his career.
Nemec may be a guy you have to be careful with or even coddle as he develops into an adult in the NHL to prevent from alienating him or stalling his development. It may be a case of our timeline and Kovacevic's emergence unfortunately hurting his development path. I think, if he Luke, and Pesce was healthy and given the spot to start the year, he would have held onto it/been given a longer leash where he would have figured it out. That's a coaching staff/management problem.
On another note, ELCs need to be rewritten in some way to give 1st round picks a 1 way instead of 2 way deal on their ELC or something like that. 2nd overall pick earning 90k a year in a professional sports league is wild to me. Also, I would be pissed if that happened to me, as woul you. Getting your earnings slashed by 10x is very meaningful