The 2025-26 season has been a tough one across the board for the Calgary Flames organization. One player in particular has been under heavy scrutiny and media attention this season. Rookie defender Zayne Parekh. The 2024 9th overall pick is a divisive prospect to say the least, and his 2025-26 rookie campaign hasn’t exactly gone to plan.
The 20-year-old has seen some harsh comments on his first NHL season recently, which, to me, isn’t justified. Here’s why Parekh’s rookie campaign has been far from a disaster.
He’s playing in the league’s worst offence
Let’s not beat around the bush here. The Calgary Flames are the worst offensive team in hockey. Sitting at 2.49 goals per game, the Flames currently rank last in the NHL. This is not a hockey club bursting with offensive talent. After trading away the likes of Rasmus Andersson, Nazem Kadri, and MacKenzie Weegar, an already weak roster got even worse. Add in a season-ending injury to Jonathan Huberdeau, and the Flames don’t exactly have a lot of talent offensively.
As we know all know, Parekh’s bread and butter is offence. Asking a rookie offensive defenceman to make an impact on a team that throws out 36-year-old Mikael Backlund as its top centre isn’t exactly a realistic ask. There are multiple plays every game where Parekh makes what looks to be a great setup play in the offensive zone, only for a teammate to bobble the pass or throw a weak shot on net.
He simply doesn’t have the talent around him that he needs to be producing offensively. Parekh is also dynamite on the power play. Well, it just so happens the Flames’ power play ranks 31st in the NHL and has been dreadful this season.
There’s a reason fellow 2024 top pick Zeev Buium has also struggled to produce on the lowly Canucks, after putting up nearly 0.5 points per game with the Wild earlier in the season. I do not doubt for one second that if Parekh were playing on a halfway decent team, he would have had way more success offensively this season. The bottom line is the Calgary Flames are an offensive black hole, and Parekh’s lack of production is in large part due to the situation around him.
He’s not fully NHL-ready, and everyone knows it
Another factor a lot of people are forgetting is that Parekh was basically forced to play in the NHL this season at 19 years old. Due to the CHL-NHL rules, a player like Parekh is not permitted to play in the AHL. His only options were to return to the OHL, a league in which he had already conquered and was way too good for, or go straight to the NHL as a 19 year old.
To call Parekh’s 2025-26 season a disaster means you expected a big year out of the rookie in the NHL. That was simply never a realistic goal to begin with. Given his style of play, stature, and skillset, the AHL was the perfect medium between OHL hockey and the best league in the world. In a perfect world, Parekh spent most of the 2025-26 season in the AHL, adapting to pro hockey, before making the jump to the NHL when he was ready.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option, and he was forced into the NHL earlier than he should’ve been. Again, if this were his D+3 or D+4 year and he was struggling in the NHL, there would be cause for concern. However, it’s fair to say almost everyone agrees he should’ve been in the AHL this season, and therefore it’s unfair to criticize his play in the NHL too harshly.
He’s dominated every other level this season
Building off the above point, we can’t forget that Parekh has looked superb at every other level he’s played at this season. Whether that’s the World Juniors playing against the best U20 players in the world, or the AHL during his four game conditioning stint, he’s looked great outside of the NHL.
Had Parkeh gone to the WJC or the AHL and struggled to produce, there would be real cause for concern. However, he simply dominated at both levels. His 13 points at the WJC set a Canadian record for the most points by a defenceman in WJC history. He followed that up by posting five points in four AHL games.
The point being, Parekh showed everyone why he’s considered one of the best defence prospects in the world at the WJC and the AHL. To call his season a “disaster” after he posted historic numbers for Team Canada and then produced over a point per game in the AHL is absurd.
His underlying numbers aren’t bad
Lastly, Parekh’s numbers simply aren’t that bad in the NHL. Sure his raw production is lacking, but who’s isn’t on this dreadful Ryan Huska offence? When you dig into the underlying numbers, Parekh has been far from the team’s worst defenceman.
Below are his current numbers across key metrics and where he ranks among the nine Flames defenders with at least 300 minutes at 5v5 this season. All numbers are courtesy of naturalstattrick.com.
| Stat | Zayne Parekh | Team Rank |
|---|---|---|
| CF% | 50.8 | 5th |
| GF/60 | 1.63 | 8th |
| GA/60 | 1.46 | 1st |
| xGF% | 49.67 | 4th |
| xGF/60 | 2.39 | 8th |
| xGA/60 | 2.43 | 3rd |
| ixG/60 | 0.14 | 4th |
All in all, those are not disastrous numbers. In fact, Parekh ranks above plenty of NHL regulars on the Flames’ blueline. Sure, his numbers won’t blow anyone away, but the fact is, he’s performing much better than some people will tell you. For a player who just turned 20 last month, went from playing teenagers in the OHL to playing NHL hockey, and is on the second-worst team in the NHL, his numbers are more than fine.
Too early for overreactions
All told, it’s simply way too early to be judging Parekh’s game. He was forced into the NHL at 19, put on the worst offence in hockey, coached by a stubborn, old-fashioned head coach, and was even banged up earlier in the year. To call his rookie season a disaster is to ignore every single piece of context surrounding his 2025-26 season. Has he been spectacular? Absolutely not, but he’s been far from a disaster.
