- Ryan Johnson says he would have said no to a contract like Zeev Buium’s five years ago
- Vancouver gave the 20-year-old defenceman eight years and $75.04 million on Friday
- Read below for what the Canucks GM said about overpaying now to win later
Ryan Johnson isn’t going to pretend the Zeev Buium contract is a bargain today.
The Canucks general manager was asked to explain eight years and $75.04 million for a 20-year-old defenceman with 76 NHL games, and he called the number one that was “admittedly overpaying right now, but being a really good deal down the road.”
Johnson went further than that. Speaking to reporters after the deal was announced Friday, he said an earlier version of himself would have hung up on the idea, per Daily Hive.
“I’ll be honest with you, if you had asked me five years ago if I would ever have considered something like this, my answer would have been immediately: no. But I didn’t want to get caught up in some archaic thinking.”
Here’s Buium and Johnson with the media after the extension:
The bill does not arrive for another year. Buium’s $9.38 million cap hit starts in 2027-28 and runs through 2034-35, and if it were live this season it would rank 11th among NHL defencemen against a $113.5 million ceiling.
He arrived in the Quinn Hughes trade last season and put up 12 points in 45 games once he got to Vancouver. Across 76 career games with the Wild and Canucks, he has 26 points.
None of that is what Johnson paid for.
“We know this contract isn’t about Zeev the player today or tomorrow. It’s where we see him in three, four, and five years.”
Sept. 15 explains the rest of it. The current CBA runs out that day, and the new agreement drops the maximum extension a team can give its own player from eight years to seven. Vancouver either got this done in the first week of September or gave up a year of control.
Buium’s agent, Kurt Overhardt, came out of the process happy with how Johnson handled it.
Asked what convinced him, Johnson kept circling to the person rather than the point totals.
“He brought such an energy and a leadership-type quality that you really don’t find in a lot of 20-year-olds, which is astonishing.”
Catch the full availability here:
Vancouver has eight years to find out whether Johnson read the defence market correctly.
