I believe this is a good idea to ensure we do a re-cache if the lazy value is null, I'm nearly positive there's code that relies on this in the core - that if this getCacheItem delegate returns null that it will *not* be cached. The same might go for the other 'Get...' methods in this class to filter out any null values so they are not returned. Again, I'm nearly positive that there is code that relies on that in the core - no null vals in the cache.