Breakout Candidate: Zeev Buium

Looking ahead to 2026-27, there’s always the question of who will break out and experience a huge surge in production. Sometimes it’s elite young talent like Utah’s Dylan Guenther, who shot up to 40 goals in his age 22 season. Or one can take undrafted 30-year-old Darren Raddysh; 5-7 years ago a strong but not necessarily elite AHL defenseman, absolutely nobody would have predicted him to explode for 70 points this past year and earn a massive contract with the Maple Leafs.

No matter how old or how young, there are always players who emerge during a campaign and never look back. Having already looked at 20-year-old Konsta Helenius of the Sabres, next up is Vancouver’s Zeev Buium.

Acquired by the club in exchange for Quinn Hughes in the unforgettable December trade with Minnesota, Buium faced a tall order moving from a strong team in the Wild to the league’s worst, all while experiencing a two-minute jump in ice time to 20:21 as a Canuck. Doing all of this as a rookie was a lot to ask, but by the spring the 20-year-old defenseman really started to find his stride. A young defender being thrown tough minutes on a bottom feeding team is always a questionable strategy, but Vancouver offers an excellent anchor for him with 28-year-old righty Filip Hronek. The duo formed a strong pairing toward the end of last year, and they’ll be ready to hold down the top pairing into next season.

Buium was placed in the right situations for a rookie, starting over 60% of his work in the offensive zone, through it all holding his own with a respectable 49.3% corsi for a five-on-five. Somewhat surprisingly, the struggling Canucks came away with the 14th best power play in the league, over 21%, with the young PP quarterback certainly playing a part in that success after losing the all-world Hughes.

Just 76 games into his professional career, the dynamic puck mover already has an incredible trophy case. Buium helped the United States win gold at the 2025 IIHF World Championships, doing so right out of college at Denver. As if that wasn’t enough, he led his home country to back-to-back World Junior titles in 2024 and 2025, which followed another gold at the under-18 championships in 2023. If you’re still tracking, the San Diego native also won an NCAA DI National Championship at Denver in his freshman campaign in 2024, debuting with 50 points in 42 games as a first-year skater, good for second-best on the Pioneers.

Winning just about everything any young United States born player could possibly dream of at this point, Buium passed on a chance to run it back with his nation at this summer’s IIHF, likely with the focus of gearing up for his 2026-27 breakout. Expectations will be tempered for the team who ranked at the bottom of the standings last season, but with Manny Malhotra coming in behind the bench, looking to have a more structured approach, the Canucks have what it takes to over deliver. Few 32nd ranked clubs in recent memory offer experienced talent like Hronek, Elias Pettersson, and Brock Boeser. There’s no shortage of uncertainty surrounding the older group, however, the new regime will look to turn the corner from a forgettable one-and-done coaching job from Adam Foote rather quickly.

One of the brightest young players in the game who fans will eagerly watch no matter where they are in the standings, Buium isn’t exactly the most under-the-radar choice among 2026-27 breakouts. Still, after debuting with a moderate 12 points in 45 games with Vancouver, next season he’s set to anchor the #1 power-play unit and could be facing usage around 23 minutes a night. The stage is set for him to lead the Canucks at a young age, putting up impressive point totals and establishing himself as their next #1 defenseman for years to come.