What the necessary Zeev Buium extension means for Canucks, NHL marketplace

The reaction from around the NHL to Zeev Buium’s eight-year extension is understandable.

Whether it’s media folks or veteran NHL executives, there’s a sense that the maximum-term, $75 million contract that Buium signed Friday is a lot of glue for a young defender who hasn’t proven it.

As a rookie, he struggled occasionally on defence. He didn’t especially flash as a power-play quarterback.

The defender has played only 80 games in his NHL career, between the regular season and the Stanley Cup playoffs. He has recorded only six goals and 27 points in his career. Now, he carries a $9.38 million cap hit.

That widespread reaction isn’t just understandable; it’s fair.

In some ways, in fact, it’s a reaction that new Canucks leadership — which made executing Buium’s extension a priority in its first offseason — shares on some bone-deep level.

“The start of something really special.” ✍️

Zeev Buium puts pen to paper on his 8-year deal. pic.twitter.com/3WwsIqyWRT

— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) September 5, 2026

“I would say if you asked me five years ago about whether something like this is something I’d consider, I would’ve said not a chance,” Ryan Johnson, the Canucks’ general manager, told The Athletic on Tuesday. He said it during a lengthy conversation in which I pushed him on the logic of signing young players to second contract extensions before the current NHL/NHLPA collective bargaining agreement expires Sept. 15. “I’d have said I firmly believe that you have to go through these steps, and get playoff games, and show what you can do. Now, it’s different.”

It is different, indeed.

It’s different because the NHL economy has been insulated from the salary-cap growth that has been routine in other North American professional leagues, most notably the NFL, throughout the so-called “flat-cap era.”

It’s different because that era is ending.

The NHL salary cap is no longer artificially set. NHL players are no longer paying back the owners for honouring their salaries during the pandemic-truncated seasons when the league was unable to generate gate revenue.

The cap is now truly and properly tethered to hockey-related revenues, and revenues are exploding.

The upper limit of the NHL salary cap has grown about 8.5 percent the past two seasons. It’s projected to jump by closer to 9 percent over the next two seasons.

If this rate of cap growth persists — and it will, barring some unforeseen economic calamity — NHL teams will operate in a cap environment with a $135 million upper limit (or so) by the end of this decade.

There’s almost no way to overstate the inflationary impact the salary cap will have on player salaries as it rises at a breakaway clip. Already this summer we’ve seen eye-popping numbers.

We’ve seen $17 million to $20 million for useful bottom-six forwards such as Michael McCarron and AJ Greer; $18 million per year for Leo Carlsson; and $20 million per year for Cale Makar. We can now add $9.38 million for Buium to the pile.

Even these numbers will likely look like bargains in two years. Provided this rate of cap growth continues, the baseline value of top NHL players — even just useful depth NHL players — will reset year over year.

The era in which the NHL’s highest-paid players were the best at their positions is over. In the cap-growth era, it’s impossible to point out that Lane Hutson is a star and fringe Norris Trophy candidate but will make millions less than Buium on his eight-year contract — because the Hutson comp is already out of date.

Now, the highest-paid NHL players will be whoever was eligible to sign their contract next.

For Vancouver, that was Buium, and there was additional urgency to get that deal done now.

Buium, 20, was a solid performer for Vancouver after his acquisition in the Quinn Hughes trade in December. There were moments his inexperience and lack of size mattered, in terms of his off-puck play and his ability to play through contact. There were many more, though, when his hockey IQ and competitive motor flashed against NHL competition.

Perhaps most important for the Canucks was the way Buium carried himself.

On the worst team in the league, he never accepted losing. He never stopped trying to make a difference offensively, even if a chance he’d taken earlier on in the game had resulted in an opponent extending its lead.

“I’m just thrilled,” Buium told reporters of his eight-year deal. “I can’t wait for the next nine years.”

Internally, there’s a sense that Buium’s work ethic and character were infectious. There are a variety of business reasons the deal was a no-brainer, but the fact the player matches what the Canucks hope to build was a significant factor.

“The first thing they told me was just to not change who I am and be myself and keep coming to the rink and being Zeev,” Buium said. “I really appreciated that from them, and I think their vision and their goals for me and for the team moving forward really resonate with myself and what I see, what I believe, and what I want to achieve here over the course of the next nine years.”

From a hockey strategy standpoint, however, this deal isn’t just an interesting, aggressive bet from a rebuilding team or justifiable for the club because of cap-growth dynamics across the league.

It was necessary for a team in Vancouver’s position.

If the club, in fact, had opted against this deal under the current CBA framework, it would have missed a soon-to-expire opportunity to create the value this organization requires to out-accumulate 31 other teams.

On Sept. 15, when the new CBA kicks in, the kind of deal Vancouver signed Buium to would become impermissible.

Teams will be limited to signing players like Buium to a maximum of seven years. This was, then, the only opportunity available for the Canucks to lock in a cap hit tethered to the current NHL marketplace for the entirety of Buium’s 20s.

 

According to Puckpedia.com, the front-loaded, eight-year deal for Buium will open with $12 million during the 2027-28 campaign and sink to $8.4 million during the final four years. After Sept. 15, that disparity would cause the NHL’s central registry to reject the contract.

Vancouver has bet that this deal is for an ascendant puck-moving defender capable of handling top-pair minutes in his mid- to late 20s. If he’s a superstar in his prime, there’s upside beyond that. If he’s simply a top-pair-calibre guy, however, this deal will provide the club with surplus value in a cap-growth era — possibly significant surplus value.

“This contract isn’t about Zeev, the player we see today,” Johnson said. “We’ve seen his journey over the years, partly last year, not just his play, but who he is as a person. He brought such an energy and leadership-type quality that you really don’t find in a lot of 20-year-olds. It was astonishing.

“So, yes, (this deal) was a lot about his play and where we see that can go. … We’re very confident in what he’s going to be as a player, but a lot of this commitment is about who he’s going to be as a person.”

The Canucks were well positioned to make this bet. This deal is less risky for Vancouver, frankly, than it would be for 31 other NHL teams.

Over the next few seasons, Buium’s higher than optimal, second-contract cap hit will almost surely be inefficient. The cost of that inefficiency will be less, however, for a team starting its rebuild than it would for most other teams.

That short-term inefficiency is a small price to pay to create significant surplus hockey value and potentially nuclear-exchange value over the latter half of Buium’s contract, when it will be about $1 million cap over cash and, presumably, the market price for comparable defenders will have mushroomed.

The success of Buium’s deal will be determined by a straightforward, unknowable question: “How good is Zeev Buium?”

The Canucks are confident in the player and the person. The evidence is still murky.

The defensive gaps and play-driving issues in his first NHL campaign were real, even if they were exacerbated by Vancouver’s unworkable defensive environment and lack of talent.

Buium’s NCAA pedigree is auspicious, his character is beyond reproach, and the skill is evident. He also has a profile — undersized left-handed defender — that can be fragile, especially if he isn’t a star point producer or power-play ace.

Even if you’re agnostic about his ability to establish himself as the next Josh Morrissey or a Morgan Rielly-type offensive defender, this was still an essential bet for the Canucks.

Outside of selecting at the top of the draft for several more seasons, this organization doesn’t have many avenues to upgrade its roster and couldn’t afford to miss the opportunity to bet long and big on Buium.