Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

20

Curtis Lazar

New Jersey Devils Center

Seventeenth overall in 2013, 524 games, and 120 points to show for all of it.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2014-15OTT676915+114000926.512:54
2015-16OTT7661420-118110787.713:52
2016-17OTT/CGY37134-84000263.99:08
2017-18CGY6521012-823001653.19:51
2018-19CGY1000-1000004:48
2019-20BUF385510-390003315.211:50
2020-21BUF/BOS507613-660015512.713:20
2021-22BOS708816-216000958.412:00
2022-23VAN/NJD49325-621000555.511:56
2023-24NJD7171825+1044012749.512:23
2024-25 so far
Career5244575120-241551245737.812:04

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.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 800 minutes

Expected goals
49.4%
48th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.3%
38th pct

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

Hindsight
Report
31st
Numbers
48th

The two rank him within 17 points of one another. 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.

Both bars are percentiles among the 415 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 800 minutes at five-on-five

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

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Kevin Bahl51.9%48.3%50.4%
Luke Hughes50.1%49.1%52.3%
Simon Nemec54.8%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.