Ice time among rookies: Ivan Demidov ranks only 29th

Originally posted on Dose.ca | Last updated Jan 17, 2026 11:23 AM ET

Ivan Demidov is a real gem of a hockey player.

The Canadiens are very fortunate to have him on their team, and to see him develop little by little with each game.

Demidov is one of the best rookies in the entire National Hockey League this season, as evidenced by the fact that he leads the rookie scoring charts with 40 points in 48 games.

That’s an impressive haul for a 20-year-old rookie, and even more so when you compare the playing time of all NHL rookies.

In fact, when you rank rookies by most ice time, well, Demidov is way down the list, even further down than you might imagine.

We know that Demidov doesn’t play much, but to know that he has only the 29th highest ice time among all NHL rookies this season is shocking.

Here are the top 14.

(Credit: NHL.com)

We can see that Demidov’s two closest pursuers for points, Matthew Schaefer and Beckett Sennecke, are in first and ninth place with 24:00 and 17:05 of ice time respectively.

Demidov, meanwhile, averages 15:18 per game, which is just slightly more than Oliver Kapanen at 31st rank with his 15:04.

Still, that’s a big difference between Sennecke and Demidov, when on average, the Ducks’ forward gets two to three more presences per game than the Habs’ rookie.

Ranking 29th for ice time among rookies is extremely low, even though there are obviously a lot of defensemen in this ranking.

Even though defensemen play more on average than forwards, Demidov is outranked by seven other rookie forwards.

(Credit: NHL.com)

Yet Demidov has double or more than double the points of all these forwards except Sennecke.

In short, the Habs’ #93 is having a superb rookie season, but this season could be all the more impressive if he were given more ice time since the start of the season.

Martin St-Louis should look at this statistic and adjust by giving Demidov more ice time night after night, because clearly, he deserves it.

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