Continuing the Minnesota Wild 2024 NHL Draft Target series with Saginaw Spirit defenseman Zayne Parekh.
Continuing the Minnesota Wild 2024 NHL Draft Target series with Saginaw Spirit defenseman Zayne Parekh.
Continuing the Minnesota Wild 2024 NHL Draft Target series, today we look at Saginaw Spirit defenseman Zayne Parekh.
This draft class is loaded with defensemen and not only is it loaded with just a few defenders, it's also loaded with talented defensemen and Parekh might be the most talented.
Parekh has played two seasons in the OHL. He has 54 goals, 79 assists, and 133 points in 116 games. He is coming off a season in which he posted 33 goals and 96 points in 66 games for the Spirit. He helped push Saginaw to a 50-16-1-1 record and second-place finish in the Western Conference.
He is only one of two defensemen to ever score 30 or more goals in his draft season. Parekh is an incredible talent who can and will quarterback an NHL team's top power play unit.
His incredible season even helped him win the Max Kaminsky Trophy as OHL Defenseman of the Year. Parekh currently plays for the Spirit which is where one of the Wild's top prospects Hunter Haight plays. Haight was the 47th overall pick by the Wild in the 2022 NHL Draft.
According to Hockey Prospecting, Parekh has full draft comparisons to Quinn Hughes, Cam Fowler, Tony DeAngelo, Chris Pronger, Brian Leetch, Evan Bouchard, and Ray Bourque to name a few.
According to Byron Bader's model, Parekh has a higher draft year Star and NHLer probability than Hughes did and has identical probabilities as Bourque did in his draft year. Which you can see in the image above.
There is no doubt Parekh has the offensive potential to be a great puck-moving and offensive defenseman in the NHL but there may be a slight risk to his game. He isn't the greatest defenseman when it comes to defending in the defensive zone but neither is Hughes from the Vancouver Canucks, although he has recently developed into a very good defender.
That being said, the Canucks have built a back-end that is full of great defensive first dmen that has allowed Hughes to play his offensive style.
This is similar to the Wild. Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin are two of the best defensemen in the NHL when it comes to defending and keeping the puck out of the net.
According to Evolving Hockey, both Brodin and Spurgeon have been some of the best defensive defensemen in the NHL in terms of xGA. This is a metric Evolving Hockey created to measure a player's expected goals against put into an average or a total.
Below is a chart of Brodin and Spurgeon's numbers in the last five years and where they rank in the NHL among all defensemen to have played 100 or more minutes during that season.
*Spurgeon only played in 16 games during the 2023-24 season but still was himself defensively despite playing hurt. If he would've played 65 games this year, based on how he played this year, Spurgeon would've finished 28th in the league in xGA.
The point is, with Sprugeon, Brodin, and the either now or up-and-coming superstar defender in Brock Faber, the Wild can afford to take an offensive-first stud defenseman in the draft since they have three defensemen to back him up.
Parekh just makes sense. If for some reason he falls to pick No. 13, which is where the Wild are projected to pick, Minnesota should jump all over that and select the 6-foot right-shot defender.
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