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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Upside? Still? This is his fifth pro season, and he has about 250 NHL games under his belt. He's had a chance with two organizations. By far the most likely view is that we already know who Curtis Lazar is, and he will never be anything more than a replacement level player. Those guys aren't too hard to find.
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There are endless examples of players who massively improved after age 22. It’s a very regular occurrence. Yeah he’s played a lot but he was also rushed and had mono. There are very good reasons why he’s struggled.
Not saying he’ll break out like Lindholm but that argument you used against Lazar is one I heard several times around the Lindholm trade. He was 23, he had played years in the nhl, he’ll never be better than what he was. It’s a bad argument.
Very few players have peaked at Lazar’s age. Most players develop significantly after his age. Backlund and Gio are two very easy examples of this. This false narrative that players in the 22-23 range can’t improve is repeated way too much on this site. We’ve seen it in the Bennett and Lazar discussions. It needs to be called out for the BS it is. We saw it around the Hanifin and Lindholm trade too and anybody who thought they had peaked and weren’t still developing was dead wrong.