The summer of 2026 has become the summer of “Sticker Shock” in the NHL. The Leo Carlsson $18 million AAV offer sheet from the Philadelphia Flyers was the first instance. Cale Makar raised eyebrows when he signed a $20.4 million AAV with the Colorado Avalanche, and you can argue Zeev Buium‘s new deal with the Vancouver Canucks will have ripple effects.
The 20-year-old signed an 8-year, $9.35 million AAV extension with the Canucks on Friday. This makes him the second-highest AAV on the Canucks behind Elias Pettersson and ahead of blueliner Filip Hronek.
This deal seems If you look at the numbers. He’s only played 76 games. Since he was acquired from the Minnesota Wild, he has 12 points in 45 games. He was also a -24. No matter how you look at plus-minus, it’s not a good number. Even a quick eye test would say it wasn’t an easy transition from Minnesota to Vancouver. However, Hronek was the only defenseman who outscored the opposition when he was on the ice. So Buium wasn’t alone in a relatively inexperienced blueline.
In the current NHL landscape, you are paying for what someone can potentially do, not what they have done. And there is a lot of potential for Buium to be a high-level defenseman in this League. His 5-on-5 play in Minnesota was solid. When he was with the Wild in 2025, he was at a 43.9 expected goals share on 5-on-5. Now, this was with a much more structured team than the Canucks were last season. It is also quite likely that he is playing with Hronek a lot more this season.
As far as the “sticker shock” price of 9.38 million AAV, this is where it may turn out to be a bargain. The first two contracts that were signed this offseason included Simon Nemec with Calgary and Pavel Mintyukov with Anaheim. Both are under Buium’s AAV (Nemec $7.25 million AAV, Mintyukov $7.2 million AAV) and are five-year deals. That means those teams will have to renegotiate a higher number sooner. If we look at the potential percentage of cap spent, with the expected rising cap, this may turn out to be 7-8% of the actual cap going forward.
Buium is the first of the 2024 drafted defensemen that signed an extension. That means players like Sam Dickinson with the Sharks and Zayne Parekh with the Flames will likely have to go higher on a long-term deal coming out of their entry-level deals.
While this looks like a high-risk move by the Canucks, the signing of Buium may turn out to be one of the smarter moves Ryan Johnson makes as GM of the Canicks
