There is no shortage of anticipation around the Minnesota Wild for the coming debut of Zeev Buium.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, prospect analyst Steven Ellis joined the show to chat about the Denver Pioneers graduate and offer up what the budding blue-liner could do in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s talk about another defenseman who could play in the playoffs with the Wild punching their ticket. What kind of role do you think Buium could play for them?
Steven Ellis: It’s kind of a mystery at this point because you’d think that maybe he would have played last night. Throwing him into the playoffs would be a difficult challenge, but this is a player who is built for big-game moments. You look at those two World Junior championships. He won the Under-18 championship. He’s won an NCAA championship and he almost won another. This is a guy who has played so much meaningful hockey already at such a young age that I think you could throw him into the playoffs and he’s not going to be fazed. I would like him to be a bit stronger, and I feel like if he just had an okay season in the NCAA then he probably would have gone back for another year to go focus on being more physical. But what he is able to do with the puck, you look at what Cale Makar did just a few years ago. I know a lot of people have been comparing his numbers. I’d say Makar was more important to his team in college than Buium was, but Buium was more productive. He had two of the best seasons by a defenseman that I’ve ever seen. He is a guy who is so hard to take the puck off of, he skates, and you put that all together and I have no problem putting him in the playoffs if I’m the Wild. But, again, you’d think that maybe they would have given him a chance to play last night.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here:
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