With junior season over, could Flames top prospect Zayne Parekh be on his way to Calgary soon?
And like clockwork, the speculation has begun about how soon Zayne Parekh might arrive in Calgary to join the Flames.
The 19-year-old defenceman, selected ninth overall in last year's NHL Draft by the Flames, saw his OHL season end on Saturday night when the Spirit allowed four third period goals to the Erie Otters, who eliminated them in five games.
About an hour before the end of the game, Sportsnet insider Elliotte Friedman stoked the fires when he said he believes the Flames had a plan in place to bring their star blueline prospect to Calgary if the Spirit were eliminated.
The most intriguing prospect in the Flames pipeline, Parekh is coming off a spectacular season in the OHL – the Herald's Wes Gilbertson's lengthy profile of Parekh was published Friday and can be read here.
After winning the CHL's Defenceman of the Year award in 2023-24, his draft year, he did even more this past season, recording 33 goals and 74 assists in the regular season and becoming the first defenceman since Bobby Orr – yes, that Bobby Orr – to record 30 goals in two consecutive seasons on the Ontario major-junior circuit.
Parekh signed an entry-level deal with the Flames in the fall so could join the team at any time now that the Spirit have been eliminated.
While he didn't light the world on fire during training camp, the organization is high on his potential and his puck-moving, high-tempo style could help a Flames group that has struggled to score.
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Contract: $4.5M x four years Surplus Value: -$14M Positive Value Probability: 1 percent I'm going to say something that may come across as controversial from someone who primarily focuses on analytics: Cody Ceci got a bad rep throughout most of his career. I know, I know, we're all trying to find the guy who did this. But after diving further into quality of competition data during the analytics era, it's become more and more apparent just how much context was missing from my previous analysis for a lot of tough-minute defenders. Ceci certainly qualifies. Ceci wasn't one of the league's absolute worst defensemen; he was just grossly overused. A No. 4 who is played like a No. 2 is often going to look like a No. 6 — and that's Ceci's career in a nutshell. After accounting for how difficult Ceci's minutes have been throughout his career, he ends up grading out at a No. 4 for the majority of his career. 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Jeannot looked like someone who was going to be a problem for years to come as a menacing power forward with a scoring touch. Turns out the problem was expecting Jeannot to replicate that ever again, first fooling the Lightning out of an entire draft class and now the Bruins out of $17 million. Since that magical season, Jeannot has 20 goals and 45 points over 198 games, an eight-goal and 19-point pace. Woof. Jeannot is a replacement-level player making third-line money. Maybe he finally regains the spark that made his 2021-22 season so alluring, but the chances of that happening feel seriously slim. In a summer filled with weird deals as a result of teams having more money than they knew what to do with, Jeannot's deal was one of the weirdest. Honorable Mentions: Will Borgen, Brad Marchand, Darnell Nurse, Brandon Montour, Mikael Granlund (Top photo of Jonathan Huberdeau and Ivan Provorov: Aaron Doster / Imagn Images)
