Zayne Parekh

9 points in 37 games, the 8th percentile in chances, and the most interesting player on this roster.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2024-25	CGY	1	1	0	1	+3	2	0	0	0	2	50.0	20:31
2025-26	CGY	37	4	5	9	-9	8	3	0	1	49	8.2	17:09
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	38	5	5	10	-6	10	3	0	1	51	9.8	17:14

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

4 goals and 5 assists in 37 games, minus-9, at 17:09 a night. His first NHL season, at 20.

The Finesse Game

The reason he was the ninth pick. The skating is excellent — he escapes pressure by turning through it, and the edges let him walk a blue line and change the shooting angle without giving up the puck.

The production has not followed yet. 75 unblocked attempts from a median of 45 feet, 4 goals, and 9 per cent from inside 20. He gets it through, which is more than most rookie defencemen manage.

4 goals in his last 10 games from 6 points, so it is starting to arrive.

The Physical Game

6 foot even and 179 pounds, and it is the whole argument about him. He cannot clear a crease, cannot hold a man out of the slot, and gets moved off pucks by wingers. 8 penalty minutes in 37 games.

This is the familiar bargain with a defenceman built like this: he has to end plays before contact becomes relevant, and when he cannot, there is nothing behind it.

The Intangibles

The 2 halves of his page disagree loudly and both are worth having. He was on for 49.4 per cent of the shot attempts — 50th percentile, dead average, and remarkable for a 20-year-old defenceman on a poor team. He was also on for 43.5 per cent of the expected goals, 8th percentile.

Read together, that says he keeps the puck moving and the chances he gives up are far more dangerous than the ones he helps create. Which is exactly what you would expect from a gifted, slight, teenage defenceman learning where to stand.

525 minutes is not a verdict. He is the one to follow here.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

sheltered· is started in the attacking end
76% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 525 minutes

Expected goals: 43.5%; 9th pct
Shot attempts: 49.4%; 51st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 15 for, 19 against. Expected: 18.5 and 24.0.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

33rd

Numbers

9th

The report ranks him 24 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2025-26 · 37 games

Top speed: 21.7 mph; 48th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.62 a game
Distance: 2.59 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.3 mph; 21st pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 2 assists, 26 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 525 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2025-26

The club: CGY took 47.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.5% — 3.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: 525 minutes at five-on-five — 19th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Joel Hanley	47.4%	41.8%	51.7%
Morgan Frost	51.3%	40.0%	47.4%
Joel Farabee	50.0%	41.5%	48.2%

47.4% together, 41.8% for him apart and 51.7% for Hanley apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Hanley and did not follow him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

75 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 60% from beyond forty.