Saginaw Spirit defenceman and Calgary Flames prospect Zayne Parekh has been on a historical run in his junior career. Now into the latter half of his OHL tenure, Parekh has established himself as one of the best defenceman in all of junior hockey.

Though the Flames are a storied franchise that has drafted and developed numerous elite defencemen, there’s a case to be made that Parekh is a more compelling prospect than anyone before him.

Calgary selected the Markham, Ontario native with the ninth-overall pick in last years NHL Entry Draft. In his draft-eligible season, Parekh amassed 33 goals and 63 assists for a staggering 96 points in 66 games played, the most points by an OHL defenceman since 1995. His gaudy numbers make it puzzling that he was still available after eight selections, but general concerns over his defensive play allowed him to skid into the back of the top 10. Regardless of defensive concerns, which teenage Defenceman are typically associated with, finding a player with the offensive upside of Parekh is extremely rare.

Zayne’s 96 points in the 2023-24 OHL season were the third most all-time by a defenceman in their draft year. Additionally, Parekh already has two campaigns ranking in the top 50 all-time for single-season goals by an OHL defenceman, with one more season of eligibility.

Last season, Parekh led the Spirit on a lengthy run in the OHL playoffs before winning the Memorial Cup Championship shortly thereafter, capping off an already incredible draft-eligible campaign. This season, Parekh has only improved, scoring 26 times and adding 46 assists over 45 games played so far in Saginaw.

The Flames have drafted 12 defencemen in the first round over their history, dating back to their days in Atlanta. Their highest-drafted blueliner was David Shand, who was selected eighth overall by the Atlanta Flames in 1979. Tied for second are Dion Phaneuf and Zayne Parekh who were both taken by Calgary with the ninth overall pick in 2003 and 2024 respectively.

It’s at this juncture, that we’ll compare Parekh’s development timeline to that of his counterparts from the past.

Beginning with Dion Phaneuf, who is an appropriate comparable to Parekh based on draft position, but an inappropriate one based on play style. Phaneuf’s role as a defenceman couldn’t be more opposite to Parekh, which makes them difficult to compare. Dion was defensive-minded, to say the least, the 6-foot-4 220-pound Albertan was a punishing presence at the Junior and Professional level, who played a stay-at-home defensive style throughout his career. Conversely, Parekh’s calling card is his ability to create offensively, and unlike Phaneuf, he doesn’t possess great size or might.

Phaneuf may have been a more well-rounded prospect but lacked the massive upside that Zayne presents with his skillset. Dion, who played for Red Deer of the WHL, had just 0.42 points per game in his draft year and only improved slightly (0.69 points/game) the following season. Although his role wasn’t to score, you’d still like to see more offensive production against teenagers than Phaneuf was able to muster. Parekh’s offensive upside gives him the potential to be a transcendent player, given that he continues to improve on the defensive aspects of the game. Phaneuf was a safer prospect, whose skillset was almost certain to translate at the next level, but he was one-dimensional and lacked the ‘ceiling’ that Zayne possesses.

Unlike Phaneuf, Al MacInnis played a similar style game to Parekh, an offence-first defenceman with a knack for scoring goals. Drafted 15th by Calgary in ’81, MacInnis would go on to become a household name in Calgary, as one of the best defencemen in franchise history. Though MacInnis had a hall-of-fame career, as a prospect he was still not as compelling as Parekh, who dwarfed the Flames legend’s point production in junior.

MacInnis had 39 points in 47 OHL games (0.83 points/game) the year he was drafted, then improved to 75 in 59 (1.27 points/game) the following season. Parekh’s production over that same timeline is much more potent, he operated at a 1.45 points-per-game clip in his draft year and has since upped that mark to 1.57 this season. Parekh, who has played 161 OHL games to MacInnis’ 159, already has more goals (79) than MacInnis did (74) in his entire junior career.

Though Adam Fox didn’t spend much time in Calgary, he was still drafted by the team and therefore must be included in this debate. Fox began as a third-round calibre prospect based on where Calgary selected him in the 2016 draft. It wasn’t until his freshman season at Harvard where he led all NCAA defencemen in assists and was named ‘Ivy League Rookie of the Year’, that Fox began to be considered an ‘elite’ prospect. Even still, Parekh’s explosive pre-draft season was on par with that of Fox’s post-draft season, and Zayne is already on pace to improve on his point total from 2023-24, whereas Fox’s production stagnated after his breakout campaign as a freshman.

Paul Reinhart is the only Flames defenceman whose junior production can hold a candle to that of Parekh’s. Reinhart put up 129 points across 66 games played for the Kitchener Rangers of the then-Ontario Hockey Association in his draft year, good for fifth-most in the league that season.

The knock on Paul is that he played both defence and centre throughout his junior career, meaning only a portion of those 129 points would have come when he was playing on the back end. Ultimately, it’s difficult to classify Reinhart as a pure defensive prospect given his hybrid role in junior, as a result, Zayne gets the edge here.

Gary Suter had a stellar pre-NHL career with the University of Wisconsin totalling 73 points in 74 games played, comparable to Parekh’s production in the OHL. Suter’s 22 points from the blue line in his draft year were substantial, but concerns over his 5-foot-9 frame turned many teams off of him and Calgary stole him in the ninth round of the 1984 NHL Draft.

Suter more than doubled his point total to 51 the following season in Wisconsin, establishing himself as a marquee player in the pipeline. Though Gary eventually overcame any concern regarding his size, it was still held against him as a prospect, as evidenced by his massive plummet at the draft. Parekh on the other hand, does not come with such concerns and is much more of a prototypical defenceman standing at six-foot, while being just as much of a threat offensively.

Amongst a pool of high-calibre prospects from the past, Parekh sticks out as having the highest potential. His lengthy track record of offensive explosiveness from the backend combined with team success makes him one of the most intriguing prospects the Flames have ever had.

Zayne already has all of the tools needed to produce offensively at the NHL level but is not yet polished defensively. However, if he does hash out the details defensively, he can truly become an elite defenceman in today’s NHL.

Given his low floor and high ceiling, there are a wide range of outcomes for Zayne’s career, only time will tell whether he’s remembered as a great prospect, a great player or somewhere in between.