When the Vancouver Canucks took to the ice for their final home game of 2025-26, there wasn’t a whole lot for the players to fight for. They had last place in the league wrapped up, 14 points back of 31st-place Chicago, and a summer of change lay ahead.
But after pulling out their first back-to-back victories since December in San Jose and Anaheim, the Canucks stayed in the win column with a 4-3 overtime victory over the playoff-bound Los Angeles Kings.
For Filip Hronek, the fight was literal on that Tuesday night. After Kings right winger Mathieu Joseph pasted prized youngster Zeev Buium into the boards in the third period, Hronek was quick to chase down the culprit and drop the gloves, earning his first five-minute major since 2020.
The moment encapsulated the Canucks’ post-deadline shift in spirit. As Canucks’ outgoing president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford explained in May, the esprit de corps shown by the up-and-comers, headlined by Buium, is chasing away the dark clouds that hung over the dressing room for two years. “The veteran players bought into the younger players being here,” he said.
“We’ve got a good group of veteran players that can mentor and lead. But these young players, their enthusiasm and how they came together, have really cleaned up that room and driven the culture going forward.”
Buium was the headliner in the four-piece haul the Canucks exacted from the Minnesota Wild when they dealt away Quinn Hughes in December. He has a skill set that makes it easy to perceive him as Hughes-lite. Both are great skaters and puck-movers, and, at just 20 years old, Buium has already amassed an incredible list of hockey achievements.
He won gold at the U-18s, and, under rising coach David Carle, he took home a national championship with Denver and two WJC titles with Team USA. In addition, weeks after starting his pro career with four poised playoff performances for Minnesota, Buium added another gold at the 2025 World Championship.
Wild GM Bill Guerin figured he’d secured his team’s blueline anchor for years to come when he gave up a third-round pick to move up one spot and grab Buium at No. 12 in the 2024 draft, but less than 18 months later, the plan changed when Hughes hit the trade block. “Zeev, I love that kid,” Guerin said. “He’s a special kid.
He’s a special human. Vancouver got three really good, young, quality guys. If Hughes wasn’t available, they’d still be here, and I was totally fine with that.
But you have to give something to get something.”
Buium and teammates Marco Rossi, 24, and Liam Ohgren, 22, leaned on each other as they made the transition to Vancouver together. In doing so, the trio made an instant impression, helping the Canucks build an immediate post-Hughes four-game winning streak.
In his first Canucks game, Buium showed his power-play chops, collecting a goal and an assist in a 2-1 victory in New Jersey. But in late January, he suffered a fractured cheekbone against the Pittsburgh Penguins after a puck got up under his visor in the first period. He returned to that game with a face-protecting fishbowl in place but missed the next five games prior to the Olympic break.
When the schedule resumed, Buium was back in action. And after finally shedding his full shield after the trade deadline, around the same time the mood in the room began to improve, he began to flash more of the vision and puck skills that had built his reputation.
After a nightmare year that saw the Canucks deliver just nine wins on home ice, Buium’s half-season rookie sample was enough to earn him most-exciting-player honors in fan-appreciation voting. And the Vancouver faithful are keen to see more. “You don’t listen to it too much or think about it too much,” he said.
“But it’s nice to know that the fans are on your side and that they care. You want to show them what you can do and make them proud.”
Midway through that final home game, Buium teased what’s to come, cutting into traffic to finish off an electric give-and-go sequence and tie the game. That set the stage for Jake DeBrusk’s overtime tally, which sent the fans home happy – a rarity in the most difficult year in franchise history.
Working beside two other promising young rearguards in Tom Willander and Elias ‘Junior’ Pettersson, Buium is embracing the challenge of raising the Canucks back to playoff-contender status as the young guns grow as a group. “We’ve really come together off the ice,” Buium said. “We’ve gotten to know each other and care about each other.
We want to reach for the stars. That’s the big message. We’re all just trying to continue to do that.”
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This article appeared in The Hockey News' Champions 2026 issue.
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