The Zeev Buium Trade Is Going to Be a Good One for the Canucks

The Vancouver Canucks are not winning with Quinn Hughes out of their lineup. You don’t replace that kind of talent cleanly, and you certainly don’t do it overnight. Anyone expecting immediate symmetry was always going to be disappointed.

But watching Zeev Buium lately, you can at least see why the Canucks made the move. There’s a real upside here. Not in the glossy, highlight-package sense, but in the way coaches notice. It’s the way he moves with the puck. The way he doesn’t panic when the ice closes. The way plays don’t die on his stick. You can see the creativity, but more importantly, you can see the confidence starting to settle in.

Buium Isn’t Hughes, But He Can Be Solid in His Own Way

Buium isn’t Quinn Hughes. There isn’t another Hughes anywhere. Hughes bends the game in a way that’s rare even at the NHL level. That was never the standard Buium needed to meet. What matters is that he brings something different—and maybe something this blue line hasn’t had in a while.

Defensively, Buium plays a harder game than people might expect. He’s not just a stick-on-puck defender or a fly-by disruptor. He gets into people. He leans on them below the dots. Last night was a good example: net-front battles, crease traffic, bigger bodies trying to establish position. Buium didn’t give ground. That matters. Especially in the Pacific, where skill still has to survive contact.

That edge changes how you project him. The question now isn’t whether he can play. It’s who he plays with.

Who Will the Canucks Pair Buium With?

Pairing is everything for young defencemen, and the Canucks are going to have to be careful here. If you put him with the wrong partner, you’ll see flashes mixed with confusion. If you put him with the right one, things could settle quickly. Someone like Hronek makes sense on paper—structure, reliability, experience. But there’s also the temptation to lean into youth and see what happens if Buium grows alongside another young piece like Willander.

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That’s the tightrope Vancouver is walking. What complicates things is context. Buium arrived from a program that had carefully developed him. Minnesota gave him time, structure, and a clear role. Vancouver is different. The expectations are louder. The margins are thinner. Mistakes are noticed.

Still, the long view matters here.

Buium Will Be a Blueliner Who Plays 25 Minutes Each Game

Buium looks like a guy who’s going to play 25 minutes a night. He skates well enough to handle it. He competes hard enough to survive it. He’s comfortable in all situations—penalty kill, late-game shifts, and eventually running a power play, though not in the same way Hughes did.

He won’t skate laterally at the blue line the same way Hughes does. He’ll attack differently. More downhill. More direct. He won’t circle back again and again to control the puck as Hughes did. He’s not worse, just different.

What the Canucks do over the next couple of months will tell us a lot. If they start moving veterans and leaning into youth, it signals trust. If they shelter him too much, it signals caution. Either way, patience will be required—from the team and from the fanbase.

The Hughes Trade Was Never for the Short Term

The trade that brought Buium to the Canucks was never about the short term. It was about reshaping the spine of the blue line.

And while it might feel messy now, watching Buium battle, skate, and push back, it’s hard not to think the Canucks may look back on this deal a few years from now and say: that’s when this franchise started to improve.

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