'Adversity is always good': Canucks' Buium navigating rookie growing pains

VANCOUVER — Despite his natural swagger and remarkable international success with Team USA, Zeev Buium assures us he has failed before.

“It's funny — nobody knows this — but I was never, like, the top guy on every team I was on,” the Vancouver Canucks’ 20-year-old rookie told Sportsnet after Monday’s practice. “It took me a long time to really kind of get my feet going and become who I am becoming. You know, it wasn't an easy path whatsoever. I think college was kind of the first time I really got that spark.”

In two seasons at the University of Denver, under coach David Carle, Buium sparked like all those NASA rockets on Cape Canaveral. 

The defenceman from San Diego recorded 98 points in 83 games for Denver and led the Pioneers to a national championship as a freshman. He also won a pair of world junior titles and, in 2024, was the Minnesota Wild’s first-round draft pick, 12^th overall.

By the time he left school last spring, Buium was regarded as one of the top prospects in hockey and touted as a potential rookie-of-the-year in the National Hockey League.

Then came this season.

After 14 points in 31 games (and a minus-five goal differential at five-on-five), Buium was the centrepiece of the Canucks’ return in the Quinn Hughes trade on Dec. 12.

Since then, Buium has six points in 20 games (and a minus-four differential), been on and off Vancouver’s top power play, was healthy-scratched Jan. 12 in Montreal, and 13 days later suffered a facial fracture when hit by the puck during a home game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

None of this is to say that Buium, who remains one of the top prospects in hockey, has had a poor season. But his status and pedigree have not exempted him from the same first-year growing pains that afflict and sometimes ambush nearly all NHL rookies.

As coaches say, development is not linear.

“It's definitely been a learning curve,” Buium said after being the last player off the ice at the University of British Columbia. “But I think there's been instances when I was in Minnesota and here where I feel comfortable with my game and what I can do out there. It kind of suck getting hurt (because) I felt like I was starting to pick up something, and I felt confident. I mean, it's definitely been tough, but I think there's positives in everything.

“I’d be lying if I thought it was going to be easy, right? But I think adversity is always good. Like I said, I think I've been in situations like this where it's tough (and) things maybe aren't going your way. I just think the way you look at it is you can't beat yourself up about it all the time. Just keep working at it, keep getting better. I try to, like, sometimes just take a step back and think, ‘You know, I’m here (in the NHL).’ If I would have told myself that when I first started playing hockey, I wouldn't have believed it.”

The timing of the NHL’s Olympic break couldn’t have been better for Buium, who had three weeks to heal and spent time at home in San Diego and during a visit with his girlfriend to Phoenix, where they attended the PGA Tour’s annual circus stop.

He is practising with a full cage on his helmet, but is expected to play Wednesday when the last-place Canucks open the final seven weeks of their season with a game against the Winnipeg Jets at Rogers Arena. 

Marco Rossi, the second-line centre acquired from the Wild, is also fully healthy for the first time since suffering a lower-body injury in Minnesota on Nov. 11. The third player acquired in the blockbuster, 22-year-old winger Liam Ohgren, has been one of the pleasant surprises in a dismal Canucks season and before the break was part of Vancouver’s best forward line alongside Teddy Blueger and Conor Garland.

But neither Rossi nor Ohgren, although key pieces in the Canucks’ future, face the pressure Buium does to develop into a top-pairing, offensive defenceman capable of replacing Hughes, the 2024 Norris Trophy winner and newly crowned Olympic gold medallist.

“He has the potential to be a great player in this league,” veteran defenceman Tyler Myers, a former Calder Trophy winner himself, said of Buium. “I'm really excited to see what he does going forward, especially the next few years, and see how he grows as a player. But it's important for everybody — the fans, the media, Zeev himself — that just because he was part of that trade, doesn't mean he should be compared to Quinn or any other player. He just needs to be himself. Highly skilled, tons of potential. It's going to be fun to watch him.”

Even with Buium’s uneven season, of the five defencemen drafted ahead of him in 2024, only second overall pick Artyom Levshunov of the Chicago Blackhawks has more NHL games and points so far than the Canuck, who is averaging 20:25 of ice time in Vancouver.

“I think I said it to you when we first met, but I just want to be myself,” Buium said. “I want to write my own story. I'm not going to look like Quinn Hughes, I’m not going to skate like him, not going to stickhandle like him. But I'm going to do things in my own way that hopefully, you know, kind of matches something that he was able to do here. That's my goal — to be the player I am, bring what I know I can bring to the game, and hopefully make the fans happy with that.”

He is eager to play the Canucks’ final 25 games.

“I'm really excited,” Buium said. “I mean, I think these games are so important to all of us. Regardless of whether you make the playoffs or don't make the playoffs ... I think for us as a team, especially us younger group of guys, the really important thing is trying to build that confidence, trying to build that game. The way I look at it is if I can play these next 25 games, making them my best games, (getting) better and better and feel really good by the end of it, that's something that you can build on in the summer. You can build on it going into next year.

“I think that’s important for the older guys, too. I feel like there’s a lot of noise around our team all the time, and especially with what happened with Quinn. I wasn't here, obviously, but I was in college, and I was hearing about (ex-Canuck) J.T. Miller and all this stuff. It's like these guys have been through a lot. For us (young players), it's helping bring a new light to the team, right? Bring a new energy. Kind of forget about all the bull---- that happened, honestly, and just get past that.”

• With a winter storm in the U.S. Northeast causing travel chaos for athletes returning from the Olympics in Italy, Canucks coach Adam Foote said Monday that goalie Kevin Lankinen, a bronze medallist as a backup on Team Finland, likely won’t be ready to play Wednesday. The Canucks four other Olympians, Czechs Filip Hronek and David Kampf, Swede Elias Pettersson and Blueger of Team Latvia, had their second practice back with the Canucks. Winger Brock Boeser, concussed by Pittsburgh Penguin Bryan Rust’s headshot on Jan. 25, practised in a non-contact jersey.