Curtis Lazar’s development hasn’t gone the way many anticipated since he was drafted 17th overall in 2013.
Tabbed as a defensively responsible player who oozed intangibles and had offensive upside, Lazar was viewed as the kind of productive, character player that the Senators lacked.
That Lazar would go on to capture the 2013-14 Memorial Cup and bring home gold in the 2015 World Junior Championships only helped fuel perceptions of him as a blue chip prospect.
When it came time for Corey Pronman to reveal his list of the ‘Top 100 Drafted NHL Prospects‘ in 2014 for ESPN, Lazar was rated as Pronman’s 14th best prospect.
Lazar had a really impressive season, as a key cog for Canada’s WJC team as an underage player, and for the Memorial Cup-winning Oil Kings. Lazar is a high-end skater with great natural speed and a motor that he displays on every shift. He’s very advanced defensively for his age, and shows above-average skill and a plus shot. His great intangibles are always evident, but Lazar is also a player who gets it done at a consistent level on the ice.
Now maybe this team-level success helped boost his profile, but in the years since his arrival at the game’s highest level, it’s impossible to ignore his progression (or lack thereof) as a professional hockey player.
Just in case you weren’t paying attention however, Lazar talked to Postmedia’s Ken Warren about his development and his belief that he’s close to turning the corner.
“It’s going to happen,” he said. “The armchair GMs and all the people who think they know hockey just look at the numbers, but not many of them have seen prospects develop in front of their eyes.”
I guess Lazar believes that Senators fans prior to the year 2000. It’s not like this franchise’s glory years were a function of drafting and player development or anything.
You don’t have to look at the statistics to realize that Lazar’s career highlight has been eating a hamburger off the Canadian Tire Centre’s ice in a moment that wasn’t even intended for him.
I can’t blame a struggling player for using the media as a mechanism to let the public know he’s still confident in his own abilities, but I don’t know why Lazar would willingly throw comments like this out there. I mean, nothing quiets vocal critics more than drawing more attention to his struggles while concurrently shitting on this fanbase’s ability to properly assess his worth. He’d only have to talk to Mark Borowiecki to know about that.
Not even his patented smile can undo this kind of PR damage, but Lazar wasn’t done.
“To get increased minutes when Hoff was out was good,” he said. “I can handle that role. I have to be patient.
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“The way I’m playing, I’m going to get over the hump and I know they don’t want to put me in situations that are over my head.
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“I hope this whole process, with everything I’m doing, is setting me up for a long career in Ottawa.”
It’s not like there aren’t some reasons which may help to explain his struggles to perform. As many have pointed out, the Senators and Lazar may have benefited by returning him to the junior ranks instead of dressing him as a third or fourth line player for the 67 games he played as a 19-year old during the 2014-15 season.
Conversely, even though it’s easy to say that the Senators should not have rushed Lazar to the NHL, there’s no guarantee that Lazar would be any further ahead now if they didn’t.
Last season Lazar attributed the constant line juggling and his positional versatility as reasons that negatively affected his comfort level, but just like all the other aforementioned factors, there’s no way to conclusively say that: 1) all of these factors have prevented Lazar from fulfilling the lofty expectations that were placed upon him as a prospect; or 2) different factors or stimuli would have helped his development.
The truth of the matter is that if Lazar’s going to have a long career in Ottawa, he has to take ownership for his development. Not only do the excuses need to stop, he has to produce.
Right now, he’s a straight-line player who lacks the confidence or creativity to play with the puck and open up more opportunities for himself and his linemates. He looks like he fell into the prototypical trap of a young player who plays bottom six minutes and feels compelled to play a conservative style that mitigates turnovers and risk so that he can earn the coach’s trust.
His questionable offensive upside essentially makes him a replacement or sub-replacement level player and realistically, it’s his first round draft pick pedigree that has afforded him numerous opportunities to stick as a regular.
Of the 288 forwards who have played more than 1,500 minutes of five-on-five hockey since the time that Lazar entered the league, Lazar is tied for 283rd in terms of points per 60 minutes of ice time. In other words, of all those qualified forwards, only four players — Andrew Desjardins, Jordin Tootoo, Jarret Stoll and Pierre-Edouard Bellemarre — have produced less relative to their respective ice times.
Perhaps most importantly, if fans are critical of Lazar’s production, it speaks more towards their concern for the organization’s asset management than it has to do with Lazar. No one wants to see him struggle or fail in his development.
The problem for Lazar is that whether you believe the criticism is fair or revisionist history, what he represents is lost opportunity: a young talent who has gone from having high value to one with next to none. For many, they believe that the organization may have held onto Lazar longer than they ought have, especially in light of the statistics or predictors which cast doubt on his future success.
Now maybe that bothers Lazar, but the onus is on him to change the perception of how he has developed.
“In some ways, I’m kind of doing that minor-league (development) stuff here,” he said. “If I put up 25 goals, 30 goals when I’m 27 or 28, what are people going to say then?”
Most fans would be ecstatic with that kind of output, but the cynics will probably remark, “Is that sustainable?” or “Which league is he playing in?”
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