This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Curtis Lazar
New Jersey Devils Center
Seventeenth overall in 2013, 524 games, and 120 points to show for all of it.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | OTT | 67 | 6 | 9 | 15 | +1 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 92 | 6.5 | 12:54 |
| 2015-16 | OTT | 76 | 6 | 14 | 20 | -1 | 18 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 78 | 7.7 | 13:52 |
| 2016-17 | OTT/CGY | 37 | 1 | 3 | 4 | -8 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 3.9 | 9:08 |
| 2017-18 | CGY | 65 | 2 | 10 | 12 | -8 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 65 | 3.1 | 9:51 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 4:48 |
| 2019-20 | BUF | 38 | 5 | 5 | 10 | -3 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 15.2 | 11:50 |
| 2020-21 | BUF/BOS | 50 | 7 | 6 | 13 | -6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 55 | 12.7 | 13:20 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 70 | 8 | 8 | 16 | -2 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 95 | 8.4 | 12:00 |
| 2022-23 | VAN/NJD | 49 | 3 | 2 | 5 | -6 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 55 | 5.5 | 11:56 |
| 2023-24 | NJD | 71 | 7 | 18 | 25 | +10 | 44 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 74 | 9.5 | 12:23 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 524 | 45 | 75 | 120 | -24 | 155 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 573 | 7.8 | 12:04 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
71 games, 7 goals and 18 assists for 25 points, 1 shorthanded, 44 penalty minutes, 12:23 a night and plus-10. He took 49.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 800 minutes, the 48th percentile, and his ice went 33-29 against an expectation of 29.35-30.03.
Four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and one fewer conceded than they called for. A plus-10 on a club that was minus-nineteen is the best mark of anybody who played for it.
The Finesse Game
74 shots at a median of 19 feet with 51 per cent from inside 20, converted at 9.5 per cent against a career 7.85.
75 career assists in 524 games. Twenty-five points is a career high in his tenth season, which tells you what a seventeenth-overall pick has amounted to. He shoots from close and there is nothing else.
The Physical Game
He is 6-0 and 203 and forechecks harder than anybody on the fourth line.
155 career penalty minutes in 524 games is a low rate for a man who initiates this much. He wins the wall, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 2 career shorthanded goals.
The Intangibles
Seventeenth overall in 2013 out of Salmon Arm, ten seasons across six organisations, and 120 points in 524 games.
He is 29 and had the best season of his career at twelve minutes a night. Draft position is a story about expectations and five hundred games is a career either way.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“He is 6-0 and 203 and forechecks harder than anybody on the fourth line.”
“He wins the wall, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 2 career shorthanded goals.”
“He wins the wall, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 2 career shorthanded goals.”
“He wins the wall, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 2 career shorthanded goals.”
“He shoots from close and there is nothing else.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 800 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.4%
- 48th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.3%
- 38th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 33 for, 29 against. Expected: 29.4 and 30.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 28 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 71 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 59th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.66 a game
- Distance
- 2.02 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 83.3 mph
- 29th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 800 minutes at five-on-five
- Erik Haula24%
- Michael McLeodoff the roster24%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2023-24
- The club
- NJD took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 800 minutes at five-on-five — 38th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Bahl | 51.9% | 48.3% | 50.4% |
| Luke Hughes | 50.1% | 49.1% | 52.3% |
| Simon Nemec | 54.8% | 47.2% | 50.8% |
51.9% together, 48.3% for him apart and 50.4% for Bahl apart. He was worse away from Bahl, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Bahl did.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
96 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 52% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.