In typical Vancouver Canucks fashion, the organization makes a major announcement on a Friday afternoon, signing Zeev Buium to an eight-year, $75.04 million extension.

Our initial thoughts when we saw this hit our news feed were, “Wow.” Fans don’t often see the Canucks take this forward-thinking approach on an unproven player. Kudos to GM Ryan Johnson on that one.

With just 76 NHL games under his belt, Buium isn’t worth the $9.38 million ticket that he now carries. But to start, who really cares? The Canucks aren’t going to be in their contention window for the first few years of the deal. This is more of a bet on who he’s going to become during the backend of the contract.

We’ve seen these contracts work out before, and we don’t have to go too far back to find the example.

The Ottawa Senators saw something in their former first-round pick defenceman after just 77 games, with four goals and 32 points. And that’s all they needed to see to give Jake Sanderson an eight-year, $8.05 million AAV extension. Buium had 26 points in 76 games, while having to deal with a mid-season trade as a rookie and playing for the league’s worst team.

Seems like a pretty similar bet to the one the Canucks just made on Buium. Three years later, the Senators must be thrilled with the type of defenceman Sanderson has become today.

But it goes much further than what Buium will do on the ice. His presence in the locker room has been evident and contagious since he arrived in Vancouver. He quickly became a leader on a team that clearly needed help finding direction, and he said as much last season in an interview with CanucksArmy:

“For me, I’ve always been someone who likes to be a part of the guys,” Buium stated. “When I was at NTDP, we started having hangouts at my house on Sundays. Every Sunday, every guy on the team would be at mine. Just hang out, just talk, get things off your chest, whatever it is. It didn’t have to be anything, could be nothing, but it’s just being together.

“I think Rasmus Dahlin said something about like drinking beers or whatever, it’s funny, but it’s true, you know? Not saying you have to drink beers, but it’s like, when you’re together, you get to know each other, you get to know your teammate better, get to know him as a person. And then you care for them more.

“Me and Tom hangout a lot. So we’re on the ice together, and I see him succeed, I’m happy for him, and he’s happy for me. We want to see each other succeed. With this group, I think that’s what it’s becoming: everybody just wants to see each other succeed. There’s no odd-man out, and everyone’s kind of in it together. That’s what I’m trying to bring. I’m trying to be connected with everybody and make it feel like we’re not just a team, we’re best friends, brothers. You spend so much time with each other, 8-9 months of the year, it’s a lot of time. If you aren’t close with each other, it’s just going to be miserable.”

With this deal, the Canucks are relatively safe as well. When the contract kicks in next season, Buium’s $9.38 million price tag will take up 8.26% of the salary cap. Just one year later, when the salary cap is at $123,000,000, Buium’s ticket will only cost 7.63% of the Canucks’ cap. And that’s just two years in. With where the salary cap is expected to go, we could see that price be what second-pairing defencemen get paid.

Of course, the most important focus moving forward will be how the Canucks develop Buium over these next few years to see whether that contract can look like a true steal of a deal.

You can listen to our full instant reaction on the emergency episode of Canucks Conversation below:

What do you think, Canucks fans? What was your instant reaction to the Buium extension? Let us know in the comments below!