As the 2022 NHL entry draft approaches rapidly, the mock drafts and questions of who will be picked start to show up often. As we’re only just over a month away from one of the most exciting days of the year, more and more players have started to show themselves off as worthy players, and thanks to the abundance of talent that we’ve seen so far, it’s made this draft a difficult yet entertaining process.
The guaranteed first overall pick will be Shane Wright, but after that, it’s fair game for countless players. Simon Nemec, Logan cooley, David Jiricek, and Juraj Slafksovky are just some of the players that can go at 2. But today, we’re not here to talk about a player that will likely go first or second.
If you’ve watched USA junior hockey at all in the last couple years, you would know who Seamus Casey is. The offensive defenseman with hands that can’t be beat has been moving around the rankings like crazy in the last couple of months, but he’s seemed to settle down around the 10-17 area.
Known as a bit of a risky player, his potential seems to be over the roof. A skillful player like him does have all the right tools to become better than people expect him to be, and today, we’ll go over why Seamus Casey is worthy of a top 15 pick in the NHL draft, and what makes him such a special player.
Elite quarterbacking skill
If you’ve seen his highlights, you’ll notice that every play Casey created either starts with him breaking the puck out of his own zone using his talent of zone exits via passes and avoiding hits, or it starts with him in that quarterback position on the powerplay and on 5 on 5.
Notably a quick thinker with a natural offensive instinct, the Miami, Florida native has been specializing in a role where he can generate offensive zone opportunities and scoring chances by his playmaking ability up high closer to the blue line.
In this clip above, we can see how the puck comes right back to that end where Casey stands at, and he picks it up with a smooth toe drag which is followed by a quick shot. Now, the puck doesn’t get to the net and it rolls to the half wall, but Casey quickly spots it, and sets himself up from there.
After taking a moment to recover and finding himself some space and time, he finds an open teammate. Thanks to him waiting and giving himself a little bit more freedom, Casey is able to give a clean pass to his teammate because he made the other defensemen bite down low. This is followed by a clearing attempt which happened because there was no goal, and Casey is forced to skate back and retrieve it.
Once he finds the puck on his stick, he fakes out the forecheck to make it look like he’ll be giving it across, when in reality he hits the attacker with a “stop, go” move that causes the forward to lose an edge. As mentioned previously, Casey’s zone exits (which lead to numerous goals for this year) are a huge plus. Thanks to the ankle breaking skill, Casey enters the offensive zone with ease.
Seamus proves that he is a smart player and presents his ability to read offensive zone plays to create high danger scoring chances that can't be beat. In the clip below, Seamus isn’t in his upper quarterback region, but he is somewhat close to that spot.
A rocket of a shot with a spicy toe drag, Casey read the play like a picture book. Once the defender receives the puck on his stick, you’ll see how quickly Casey pivots away to the outside, just to get the pass to himself. He chooses to walk in closer, toe-dragging around two different defenders, and finally using his wicked wrist shot. Casey makes this toe-drag to wrist shot move quite a bit. A majority of the time, it works. And when it doesn’t, it’s either wide of the net, blocked, or a highlight reel save. When I tell you that move feels unbeatable, it’s because it merely is.
Creation of space
Arguably his best feature, Seamus Casey generates space and time in the offensive and defensive zone. His spin move is undeniably his golden ticket, but even when he doesn’t use it, he somehow always makes the defender move away from him giving Seamus all the time in the world to create an offensive play.
Here, Casey drops down low at the boards while his teammate moves into Casey’s original spot. Choosing to stay low, Casey gets a swift pass onto his stick. From there on out, he makes the Czech defender move up high, right before using his deadly spin move to get away from any pressure he had in the first place. Seconds later, he finds himself in complete open territory because he just freed up so much offensive room to work with. In the NHL, it’s likely going to end up being a goal just because of how much room he now has.
He chooses to fake around to the outside of the pad, but there is no goal on the play. With a bit more scoring and finishing work, that’s a goal 9 times out of 10. This is just the one that got away.
In this clip above, Casey gets a nice pass right onto his stick. Carrying it wide rather than in, he uses that toe-drag that we saw earlier to get around one attacker. That's Immediately followed by his trademark spin move. Once he completes his quick movement, he once again finds himself in a situation where he’s got both defenders completely lost while he has extra room to make some sort of play happen. He chooses to pass it low instead, and then switches spots with the player passed it to.
These are only two examples of what he does routinely, but this is easily his best attribute. A lot of this has to do with him being able to read defenders quickly, but it also has to do with his elite agility and edgework. His capacity to separate himself from the player checking him is arguably top 2 in the draft, and it isn’t 2.
Here’s Seamus using those same edges and spin skills to get away from the forechecker, not only giving him one less player to worry about, but also giving him another zone exit.
His evasiveness and his work to be able to fake out defenders in the offensive and defensive zone give him that extra boost that makes it feel like he’s worth a top 10 pick. Not many NHL players are able to ever so smoothly escape through high pressure situations using edges and separation like he does. If he can be able to pull off these types of moves in his draft year, it’ll be terrifying for the rest of the league once he fully reaches his potential.
As we see the NHL penalty kill because of much more aggressive and so much more offensive thinking, every team will need a player who can easily escape the pressure of a forechecker. Casey will do exactly that, and once he does make the NHL and manages to escape those tight areas, it’ll feel like the powerplay has more space to work with. That’s his specialty, and it’ll come up big for whatever team ends up picking him.
Natural offensive instinct
This upside has mainly been covered already when we discussed his dekes, wrist shot, and quarterbacking skill, but since it plays into his success so much, it deserves to be talked about a little bit more.
Already shown in one of the clips, Casey likes to step a little deeper into the offensive zone when there’s a cycle. It’s almost like when he realizes that he tires out the other team and he depicts that he’s still got energy saved up, he’ll droop down a tad bit and attempt to generate some sort of scoring chance. Letting him fall back down will give the forwards one extra offensive thinking “forward”, and with his ability to push to the net feeling untouched, tells me that he can be extremely versatile when it comes to transitions.
A lot of that feeling of being untouched comes from his confidence. He is always willing to take the extra step and create some sort of fancy deke. Has and can it hurt him? Of course, we’ve admittedly seen him lose the puck and lose a golden opportunity before. But his willingness to pull off a flashy move to get something worked out is outstanding.
And while you may think that trying to be too flashy and too creative with the puck is going to eventually sneak up on him and bite him in the behind (which it likely won’t because the modernized game of hockey is prone to these types of moves– plus he’ll only get better and better at executing these types of dekes), he knows how to keep it simple and how to make an offensive play.
Here, Seamus realizes that the puck isn’t going to be touched by the forward because that forward has lost track of it, so he steps up and pinches in at the right moment just to fake a shot making the defenseman and goaltender flinch, which goes in thanks to some really nice tic-tac-toe from the forwards. He knows when to be fancy and when to keep it simple. It’s all a part of his natural offensive instinct, which truly isn’t possessed by many defensemen in this draft class. That’s what makes Seamus Casey stand out to me amongst every other defenseman in the 2022 class.
Things Seamus can improve on
Speed in hockey is a growing thing that we’ll start to see every player have. In some earlier years of the cap era, an NHL player was considered good if he was fast. Fast players could get around the tough ones without even getting touched, and because they were fast, it felt like nobody could catch up to them. Nowadays, if you’re not fast or quick, you likely won’t see much ice time (if you’re in a skill role, that is).
Seamus Casey has exceptional skating. His edges and his footwork is terrific. Watching him defend or watching him generate some sort of offensive opportunity using his agile edges puts a big smile on my face, but one of his main issues would be his speed and quickness. While the technique is there and he has all the right tools to be an A level skater, for some reason, the quickness isn’t there.
He doesn’t skate as fast as we want him to, he doesn’t get to the puck fast enough, and sometimes, it costs him on odd man rushes. You don’t want to see a defender lose his role because he can’t catch up to attackers. In the USHL and NCAA, he’ll likely be able to contain the footspeed of the players. But once he comes into the NHL, he may just be beaten out by any player who’s even slightly faster than him. To me, that’s a massive red flag.
Speed and explosiveness (with and without the puck) is an issue for him. Just like a few other players, it can and likely will be fixed over time. We can’t expect his not-so-fastness to be fixed overnight; it’ll take a couple years before we see it come even remotely close to where it needs to be. For NHL-like speed, that makes things harder.
This leads into my next point, which is transitioning to the NHL. The worries of him not being able to be as beneficial or as effective in the NHL a few years from now, compared to how he currently is, is a big worry for some scouts. That makes Casey a risky pick. Not being able to transition into an NHL role won’t benefit anyone. While that hasn’t happened yet (or hopefully ever), it’s something worth noting and worth keeping an eye on.
While Casey has his negatives and that does make him a legitimately risky pick, he has touches to his game that’ll put him over the top. His undeniable offensive skill fuels him past the competition, and if he continues his porgressive two-way trajectory, he’ll very likely become a worthy pick in the mid-first round
Seamus Casey does have risk to his game, but if he does blossom into the player that we’ve seen him portray in the USHL and numerous tournaments, whoever drafts him will likely receive their offensive defensemen for many years to come.
*Photo Credit: IIHF
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