Eight years, and he asked for all of them
Zeev Buium is 20. He has played 45 games for Vancouver. The Canucks have just committed $75.04 million to him.
The deal was announced on Friday night and does not even begin until the 2027-28 season. What it does immediately is erase the restricted free agency Buium was walking towards after this coming campaign. He says he never wanted the shorter version.
“It was pretty easy for me,” Buium said, per NHL.com. “When they came with the offer it wasn’t a hard decision to make. Personally, I wanted to be here for eight years, I didn’t want it to be shorter, and I’m really glad. I love the city. I love the fan base. I love where this organization is going.”
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The Quinn Hughes trade, still paying out
Buium arrived in Vancouver on December 12, 2025, as the centrepiece of the return for Quinn Hughes. Minnesota had taken him 12th overall in the 2024 draft and kept him for barely a season and a half. Trading a franchise captain for a teenage defenseman either defines a rebuild or buries the general manager who signed off on it, and Vancouver have now doubled down before the second full season has started.
The raw numbers are modest. Across both teams last season Buium played 76 games for 26 points, six goals and 20 assists. His 45 games in Vancouver brought three goals and nine assists. Nothing in that line forces a cap hit of roughly $9.4 million.
What Ryan Johnson is actually buying
The general manager was open about that. “This contract isn’t about Zeev the player today or tomorrow,” Ryan Johnson said. “It’s where we see him in three, four, and five years and so it was something that we felt if both sides could come in agreement and make a commitment to each other, it was something we’d be excited to get done.”
Johnson called him a proven winner and pointed at the dressing room rather than the box score. “A lot of this commitment is who he is as a person, his ability to impact the dressing room, and his overall desire to win is extremely evident.” He made a point of adding that the eight-year term came from the player, not the club.
The market Johnson is buying into shifted a week ago, when Cale Makar signed for eight years and $163.2 million in Colorado and became the first NHL player to clear $20 million a season. Buium’s number sits at well under half of that. Vancouver are betting the gap closes.
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