Picker of Cherries wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2026 10:20 pm
Cornuck wrote: ↑Sun May 17, 2026 6:43 pm
Donnie is SO correct.
Give the kid a fuckin' break. He's not replacing Hughes, he's a promising young Dman. Give him a couple of years at least.
There are people in the web verse wanting to sign Buium to an 8x9m deal this summer. These are the people I refer to that are overrating him. Yes, he may turn into a star - who the hell knows? Just saying, overpaying and locking him in the core is very premature.
Quinn Hughes signed a 6 yr 7.85K deal after his second full season, as an RFA not eligible for a qualifying offer. That was 9.6% of the team's cap in an era where the cap was going to be flat for some time. The contract ate into two UFA seasons.
At the time the contract was signed, Hughes had taken a step backwards off of his impressive Calder runner up rookie season. He couldn't find the back of the net for the longest time, he "won" the golf tournament with the biggest "-" on the team in the plus/minus stat. He was less protected in terms of defensive match ups as compared to his first year (he led the Canucks skaters in TOI), but his defensive game had yet to justify that kind of deployment. It was more of a function of "who else" and a disappointing season all around so that his development was more important than wins and losses. And his most common partner was Hamonic (followed by Myers), a downgrade from his rookie campaign where his most frequent partner was Tanev.
To be sure, Hughes' first full season was incredible. His shortcomings were covered by a high quality partner, he played well in the bubble playoffs, and his offense was translating more than Buium's last year. To be fair to Buium, however, Hughes was the primary PP QB from day 1 of the first full season, and a lot of his offense was on the PP. Buium's power play deployment in his first season, however, was erratic -- often not on the first unit, and with far less skilled overall personnel. (And to be fair to Hughes, Hughes showed himself to be an elite PP player from the beginning moving the puck, walking the line, getting shots (as powder puff as they were) through -- and Buium hasn't shown that. Being good on the PP is a skill that Hughes already had, and Buium still needs to develop).
At the end of Hughes' second campaign, when he signed his contract, I don't know that there were a ton of people thinking he was going to be a perennial Norris contender. Special player? Sure. Elite? Maybe if all things break. And they did -- the defensive game improved dramatically, Hughes' shot improved, his skating remarkably got even better, and maybe most importantly he increased the variation in his offensive game making him very hard to predict and defend).
It would not surprise me much if Buium put together a campaign next year that is as good as Hughes' second full season -- still a minus player, but 50+ points and more goals than Hughes was producing at the time. There is skill there that had we not seen Hughes then we would not have seen in Vancouver forever. It is is a skill set that could evolve to a point a game player, very rare from the back end. And if he can improve his defensive play to be decent, even if he doesn't hit that offensive ceiling (but is more of a 50 point guy), he's going to be a very valuable defenseman.
I don't have a strong opinion about what the right number is, where my ceiling would be if I were RJ. But I can do math, and $9M is not a number where I am not thinking it through carefully. $9M as season is 8.6% of next season's cap -- a full percentage lower than what Hughes signed at. But actually, that contract wouldn't kick in until the following year, where the cap is estimated to be 113.5M. That's 7.9% of the cap. And over the course of the contract, that's only going to go down. 7.9% is a lot less than 9.6% -- and it should be less (he hasn't proven as much as Hughes had when he signed his contract). But built into that is also a higher upside, because it buys (I think) 4 UFA years, not 2, so there's an even greater windfall potential as compared to UFA-market-price-for-equivalent-player if things go well for Buium's development.
7.9% is a total bargain if Buium hits, and a pretty good deal unless he stays a defensive train wreck and is only an okay offensive defenseman. I think its far more likely his defense gets to at least decent and his offensive game becomes at least good offensive defensemen than missing on both of these. And I think its as likely that he becomes a good defensemen and a special offensive defenseman than he hits his floor.
Another way to look at this is what if Buium plays similarly next season to Hughes' second season. He will still not have demonstrated as much (because of Hughes' rookie campaign), but he's be showing a constant upward trajectory. A Hughes equivalent deal would be 10.9M over 6 years. That's about 7M less over the term of the contract for 2 fewer seasons... But those 2 seasons aren't unimportant -- the if-thing-go-well competitive window for this team starts in a minimum of 4 seasons (so year 3 of this contract); a far more realistic window is 5 or 6 seasons (so year 4 or 5 of the contract). If a longer term deal is struck and that ends up a bargain, its the biggest bargain when it matters.
Last point here, there is a benefit to being able to weaponize cap space, but its not nearly the same benefit or pressure as coming into cap compliance (which the Canucks had to navigate when signing Hughes and Pettersson that 2021 offseason). The difference in having, say, $16M in cap space instead of $15M in cap space to weaponize is pretty much a wash. The best case scenario windfall happens whether the salary is 8M or 9M; the greatest effect on the windfall benefit would be any significant development in the player's game between now and whenever an alternate contract that foes into UFA years is signed.
I know there are concerns about the millstone contract. There's a potential that Buium won't play up to a $9M contract, that he'll be a guy you'd shelter on a good team with bottom pairing 5 on 5 match ups, pp duties, and get him on the ice when down by a goal in 3rd duties. In other words, if he stops developing altogether. But there's always a risk to a team of extending a young player to a long term deal paying him way more than he's worth now. If there weren't that risk, then young players would never sign these deals. And of course there are lots of scenarios where neither the ceiling nor the floor is hit; that contract doesn't commit the team to Buium forever; its a contract that can get moved if you want to move on from the player.
There is no better time to sign these deals than now, in a rebuild. You aren't concerned from a cap perspective about the short term underperformance that would concern you if you were trying to ice the best team possible in the short term. (This is why teams sometimes prefer the 3 year deals for good players who they think will continue to improve, to fit the guy under the cap now and deal with the consequences later). And when teams sign these 8 years deals and the players hit, that's when you can squeeze in an extra difference maker or two when you are competitive, and when you aren't competitive, can get a king's ransom if you need to go through Rebuild 2.0.
If Zeev is the kind of guy who they think is committed to getting better and is a positive presence in the room (or at least not a dick), I think locking him up long term makes all kinds of sense. Its a risk worth taking.
, what does his next deal look like? I guess we get to, hopefully, see a full season from him this upcoming season.