The Zeev Buium Problem the Canucks Soon Hope to Have

There is a funny thing about young defencemen in the NHL. One year, everybody is talking about potential. The next year, they're talking about money. Zeev Buium is entering his age-21 season, and the Vancouver Canucks have a chance to find out just how quickly that change can happen. Buium scored 26 points as a rookie, which is perfectly respectable.

But history tells us that some young defencemen make a rather dramatic jump in Year 2. Drew Doughty went from 27 points to 59. John Klingberg went from 40 to 58. Paul Coffey and Sergei Zubov made even bigger leaps. Nobody should expect Buium to become Paul Coffey overnight, but the point is that offence can arrive rather suddenly for a gifted young defenceman when the role grows with it.

Buium should have ample chances to shine with this Canucks team.

And that's where things get interesting for the Canucks. Buium had 10 power-play points last season, but only four came after he arrived in Vancouver. His ice time increased after the Quinn Hughes trade, but his power-play opportunity actually went down.

Give him a bigger role, give him more time with the man advantage, and suddenly 50 points doesn't look quite as crazy as it did when the season ended. It would still be a substantial jump from 26 points, of course. But Buium has already shown that he can produce offence, and Vancouver has a pretty good reason to give him the opportunity to find out how much he can produce at the NHL level.

The Canucks should hope that Buium gets more expensive quickly.

The funny part is that the Canucks should actually be hoping this creates a problem. If Buium explodes into a 50-point defenceman at 21, Vancouver will have to pay him a lot more than it would today. The new collective bargaining agreement also changes the contract equation, with seven years becoming the maximum term for a player re-signing with his current team. So there is a legitimate argument for getting a deal done before Buium's price jumps.

But there's another way of looking at it. If Buium turns himself into a top-four defenceman, a power-play quarterback and one of the organization's most important young players, then paying him $10 million or more isn't the worst problem a rebuilding team can have. Sometimes the best news about a prospect is that he becomes too expensive to be a prospect anymore.