Zayne Parekh sits as a healthy scratch as Yan Kuznetsov makes season debut

The Calgary Flames will be hosting the Columbus Blue Jackets tonight as they will celebrate Nazem Kadri’s 1000th career game. However, it has come at the cost of Ryan Huska’s brain-numbing lineup decisions once again.

Zayne Parekh will once again sit as a healthy scratch, for reasons unknown to the fan base, but newly called-up Yan Kuznetsov will make his season debut on a pairing with Brayden Pachal.

Scratching Parekh continues to be suboptimal

Parekh will now sit for his third time in the last four games, and continuing down this path after they just burned the first year of his entry-level contract is just ridiculous at this point. Parekh has definitely seen some struggles, as we all thought the 19-year-old would experience; however, it has not warranted him sitting him this many games early on in the year.

He has shown flashes of brilliance at times, and his on-ice impacts have been some of the best on the team despite playing with lower levels of skill every single night. I don’t really know what else he has to do to stay in the lineup anymore. They haven’t put him in a spot to succeed all season long, and they are surely destroying his confidence by sitting him, basically saying that if he makes one mistake that he will be sitting out the next game.

This is not the way to handle your team’s best prospect in almost a decade, and I continue to question whether or not Huska should be the head coach of an NHL team.

Kuznetsov’s season debut

On the other side of the equation, Kuznetsov has earned himself a look at the NHL level. He has been great with the Wranglers the last few seasons and a part of the left side of the Flames’ defence, as questionable as it has ever been. It will be nice to see him get into a game.

Kuznetsov has one NHL game under his belt, coming way back in the 2023–24 season, so he has seen what the NHL is all about before. If he can play well in this call-up, maybe he can cement himself on the team for the long term. This is a big opportunity for him, so we’ll see what he can do.

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