On Friday afternoon, the Vancouver Canucks signed Zeev Buium to an eight-year contract extension worth $9.38 million.

We’re fans of the deal, and view it as a sharp bet for the rebuilding Canucks to make on a young defenceman who hasn’t lived up to expectations just yet but features a profile that could see him rise into the upper echelon of NHL blue liners. Plenty of ink has been spilled on this website about Buium, the player, already. That’s not what we’re doing today.

Instead, we’re going to dive into how Buium’s contract compares with other young defencemen around the NHL, particularly ones who signed for seven or 8 years.

First, a reminder of the Buium contract:

Buium’s extension kicks in for the 2027-28 season, and will see him paid $9.38 million annually.

When the contract kicks in, and the upper limit of the NHL salary cap rises to $113.5 million, Buium’s contract will account for 8.26% of the Canucks’ total salary cap. That percentage would obviously only decrease further if and when the cap continues to rise, as many people anticipate. That’s an important fact to remember as we dive into comparables.

Signing a player to a contract like this carries inherent risk. We have a prime example of what it might look like if Buium doesn’t turn out to be the top pairing defenceman the Canucks think he will, and instead emerges as a 30-40 point offence-first second-pairing defenceman with question marks around his defensive game over the next few years.

That comparable is Owen Power, who signed an eight-year deal with the Buffalo Sabres that began in the 2024-25 season.

Power was the first overall selection of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, and the Sabres decided to place a bet on him at the start of his second NHL season in 2023-24 when he signed an eight-year extension that kicked in for 2024-25. After putting up 35 points in 79 games during his rookie campaign, Power didn’t take a meaningful step forward in his sophomore season, posting 33 points and still struggling to take care of his defensive responsibilities.

2024-25 — the first season of his extension — was a step forward for Power, who put up 40 points, but this past season was a disappointing one. Power registered a career-low 29 points while playing a career-high 81 games, and wasn’t exactly a defensive dynamo this past season either. He’s a fine second-pairing option, but Power is a prime example of what it might look like if the Canucks’ bet on Buium doesn’t exactly pay off. The Sabres’ bet on Power hasn’t paid off to this point, but maybe there is a positive to be taken away that the “not working out” comparable for Buium is a defenceman whose contract isn’t really much of a hindrance to his team and is rapidly approaching what it looks like second-pairing defencemen are going to be paid in a year or two anyway.

We know Bowen Byram is an imperfect example to bring up, as he signed his extension with the Chicago Blackhawks this offseason after already playing 328 regular-season games and 40 playoff games. But he is still young, having just turned 25 this offseason, and to this point, he’s only topped out at 42 points, which he accomplished this past season with Buffalo. And of course, the Blackhawks are making a pretty sizable bet of their own on Byram with that contract, even if he’s played more games than some of the other defencemen we’re going to dive into on this list. Byram stood out in the playoffs with Buffalo, and the Blackhawks are bringing him in to be “the guy” on their blue line, believing that he has even more to give than he has shown to this point in his career.

Now, a clear example to point to as the reason why you sign the Buium contract if you’re the Canucks (and one we wrote about over the weekend).

After just 77 NHL games in which he posted 32 points (remember that Buium had 26 in his rookie campaign), the Ottawa Senators locked up 2020 5th overall pick Jake Sanderson on an eight-year deal at $8.05 million. In 2023-24, Sanderson’s sophomore season and the final one of his ELC (the exact scenario Buium will be in for 2026-27), he took a slight step forward in his production, putting up 38 points in 79 games, six more than he posted as a rookie in two fewer games.

In 2024-25, however, the first year of Sanderson’s extension kicking in, he amassed 57 points in 80 games, finishing tied for 10th in scoring among NHL defencemen. This past season, Sanderson put up 54 points in 67 games, emerging as a true top pairing option for the Senators and finishing 15th in points per game. He’s also very young, about to enter his age 24 season in 2026-27.

On top of being a good success story, Sanderson is also a good reminder that even if Buium doesn’t explode offensively in 2026-27, he still has plenty of time to grow, and it won’t be for at least a few years before we can draw definitive conclusions about Buium’s contract and whether the Canucks’ bet on the player has paid off.

Those three players are the ones we wanted to highlight most, but during the exercise, we looked at a number of young NHL defencemen who signed long-term with their teams. As you can see by the below chart, in terms of cap percentage at the start of the contract, the Canucks did well:

Now, percentage of cap doesn’t matter a ton for a rebuilding squad that doesn’t look like they’ll be spending to the limit of the salary cap.

But it might matter a heck of a lot more to the Canucks in four years, when Buium will still have five seasons to go on his contract at $9.38 million annually, and that’s exactly why we like this bet on a player the club clearly feels strongly about.