Man, Zayne Parekh had a really, really weird first professional season, didn’t he?

The ninth overall selection by the Calgary Flames in the 2024 NHL Draft, Parekh joined the club in 2025-26 on the heels of one of the most impressive couple seasons an Ontario junior defenceman has ever had. He had back-to-back 30-goal campaigns, the first time any Ontario junior blueliner had done that since Bobby Orr. He also hit the 100-point mark for the first time since Ryan Ellis.

It felt reasonable to have confidence that he would be able to generate offence once he got used to pro hockey, but it was the speed and physicality he would need to adjust to.

With that in mind, let’s break Parekh’s 2025-26 campaign into chunks.

He played 11 times in the Flames’ first 15 games, posting just one assist and looking generally fine, with a few flashes of something more. He was injured in the last game he appeared in on Nov. 7, 2025, suffering an upper body injury that didn’t require surgery, but kept him out of the lineup for quite awhile.

He went away to the World Juniors for about a month, joining Canada’s national junior team in mid-December and staying with them through to the conclusion of the tournament. While with Canada, Parekh really impressed offensively, posting 13 points in seven games and winning bronze. His performance set a Canadian record for most points (and tied the Canadian record for most goals) by a blueliner in a single World Junior tournament.

He returned to the Flames and after nursing an injury he suffered in the World Junior semis, he joined the Wranglers on a conditioning stint for two weeks in mid-January. He played four games and had five points. Heck, he looked more and more confident every time he hit the ice.

He returned to the Flames after his conditioning stint at the very end of January. From his return to action on Feb. 2 against Toronto, his first NHL game in nearly three months, to the end of the season, he played 26 of the Flames’ final 28 games. He posted eight points. By the time he returned from the Wranglers, Rasmus Andersson had departed to Vegas. His ice time took an uptick late in the season after MacKenzie Weegar was sent to Utah in early March. Fun fact: all eight of his points scored over his last 26 games came after the trade deadline, including some very nice goals.

The best predictor of future performance is past performance. If you extrapolate Parekh’s entire 2025-26 season over 84 games, that’s 20 points. However, it was pretty clear in the first couple of months that he was trying to figure out pro hockey while the Flames were trying to figure out the best way to use him. In 26 games from February to April, he performed at a 29 point pace. If you just look at his final 20 games after the trade deadline, it’s a 34 point pace.

Parekh will have the benefit of learning from a really challenging season, albeit one where he seemed to make steady progress and rediscover his OHL swagger at the NHL level in March and April. We’re pretty sure that Parekh will be better in 2026-27 than he was in 2025-26. But we’re not entirely sure just how much better he’ll be. Given his history of success in junior hockey, the smart move may be to avoid putting a ceiling on it.

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