[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher

Yup. And I've been an advocate that one shouldn't write Lazar completely off at this point either. He had a great year in the AHL that should really have boosted his offensive confidence because he got a lot of touches in all situations. I think Lazar is a candidate to compete for a spot next season.

The majority of 22-24 year old hockey players significantly improve at some point in their careers. It takes some patience to ride out the mediocre years. We saw it with Backlund who took a few years to flourish. Same goes for Gio and Brodie. We all have to remember to be patient with players like Bennett, Janko, Lazar, Dube, Kylington, etc even though we've had them for years. The best should be yet to come for most of them if not all of them. You can't expect every young player to be a Monahan, Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Valimaki, etc. It's unrealistic, not every player is an instant impact player. Most players have their ups and downs and plateaus before finally figuring it out years later.

IMO we don't need to be focusing on the playoff rookie 3rd line centre for being only okay. Jankowski is far from the biggest problem, I don't think he'd make my top 5 biggest problems so far.

Ok Man.