On Tuesday, rumblings began to pick up that one of the Vancouver Canucks‘ main priorities this offseason will be to sign defenceman Zeev Buium to a contract extension.

Acquired as one of the main pieces of the Quinn Hughes trade with the Minnesota Wild back in December, Buium is about to wrap up the second season of his entry-level contract. While this has technically been Buium’s rookie season, signing with the Wild at the tail end of 24-25 — and appearing in four playoff games — burned a year of his ELC.

That means that as of July 1st, Buium will be eligible to sign a contract extension with the Canucks. And of course, this will also be the last offseason before the NHL’s new CBA kicks in, at which point teams will lose the ability to sign their players to eight-year contracts.

As of next season, that number will drop to seven years for players re-signing with their own team, and down to six for players joining a new team via free agency. Specifically, the old rules will be in place until September 15th, so the Canucks and Buium’s camp essentially have from July 1st to September 15th to work out a contract if they want it to be of the eight-year variety.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that an eight-year deal will make sense for both sides, but nonetheless, the option will be there, and that certainly adds an interesting element to these negotiations.

To this point, there are already a number of eight-year deals that have been signed around the league that won’t kick in until next season. Kirill Kaprizov’s eight-year deal, valued at $136 million, kicks in next season and illustrates just how lucrative these deals can be for players, with the NHL’s salary cap expected to continue to skyrocket in the coming years. Leon Draisaitl, Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner — the list goes on.

And it’s not just star players who have inked these max-term deals while they still can. Fellow young defencemen Jackson LaCombe (Anaheim), Brock Faber (Minnesota), and Lane Hutson (Montreal) have also committed to eight-year deals, and these could serve as interesting benchmarks for Buium and his camp to look at.

If Buium were to sign an eight-year contract this offseason, who else could join him? Could he really be one of the last? Let’s dive in.

We’ll talk about Bedard and his specific situation a bit later in this article, but the North Van native was in no rush to sign an extension with the Blackhawks when he became eligible to last July, and that bet on himself seems to have paid off. Bedard has outscored the rest of his teammates by a significant margin this season, and is about to score 30 goals. He’s Chicago’s franchise cornerstone, and they will no doubt try to entice him with a big-ticket eight-year deal this offseason. Of course, Canucks fans already know he’ll take the shortest deal possible to get to free agency so that he can sign in Vancouver and fulfill his boyhood dream of bringing a Stanley Cup to his hometown.

But hey, Chicago can still try.

Alex Tuch is about to turn 29, and stuck it through the tough years with the Buffalo Sabres. He’s now a big part of the reason the Sabres are poised to not only end their 14-year playoff drought, but also why they are in the running to finish atop the Atlantic Division. An eight-year deal would take him until he’s 37 years old, but it’s absolutely a possibility that Tuch signs one of the league’s last eight-year contracts.

With 39 goals and 85 points to his name this season, Jason Robertson leads all upcoming restricted free agents in both goals and points. He’s a prime candidate to get an eight-year deal, but with the cap going up, might he accept something shorter to try to perfectly time when he can hit unrestricted free agency?

Anaheim already locked up defenceman Jackson LaCombe on an eight-year deal, and with an exciting young core that’s ready to break through, it will be interesting to see how many of their youngsters Anaheim chooses to lock up in a similar manner. With 36 goals to his credit so far this season, Gauthier should fall into the category of players the Ducks want to lock up long term.

Similar to Gauthier, Leo Carlsson is another Ducks youngster set to become an RFA this offseason. The second overall pick in 2023, Carlsson is right around the point per game mark this season. But as is the case with many of these youngsters, there’s a chance he has more to give, and taking a shorter team deal might be in his best interest, depending on what the Ducks are willing to offer long term.

If ever there were a player worth going to eight years with, it’s Macklin Celebrini. It’s hard to put into words what Celebrini has meant to the Sharks franchise to this point, and San Jose should be ready willing and able to back up the Brinks truck for Celebrini and sign him to one of the league’s final eight-year deals. Of the names we’ve mentioned, it feels like Celebrini is the likeliest of all to sign for the maximum term he’s able to on an extension this offseason.

The Sharks might be able to lock up a couple of their young centres this offseason, as, on top of Celebrini, Will Smith will become extension eligible as of July 1st.

Finally, we get to the player whose rookie season production would be good enough to capture the Calder Trophy in practically any other season. Unfortunately for Ivan Demidov and the Montreal Canadiens, Matthew Schaefer is playing 25+ minutes a night for the Islanders and has almost single-handedly revitalized that franchise by managing to log top-pairing minutes as an 18-year-old. Regardless, the Habs are more than happy with what Demidov has been able to do in his rookie season, and could be more than happy to make a long-term commitment to him this offseason.

Here are some more players who will specifically become extension eligible this offseason, as like Buium, they’ll be heading into the final year of their ELC’s in 2026-27:

Jimmy Snuggerud (Blues), Ryan Leonard (Capitals), Matthew Wood (Predators), Sam Rinzel (Blackhawks), Oliver Moore (Blackhawks).

Now, we don’t want to dive too deep into the topic of what a contract for Buium would look like — it’s going to be a long offseason, after all — but for the purposes of today’s question, it’s at least fair to ask if Buium would even want an eight-year contract.

Buium hasn’t exactly kicked down the door and left zero doubt that he’s going to be a stud defenceman for years to come, and while the upside is certainly there, the rookie season body of work won’t be there the way it was for Lane Hutson, who put up 66 points and won the Calder Trophy in his rookue season before signing his extension.

That might mean that while the Canucks could very well offer Buium an eight-year contract, he might not love the AAV the club suggests should go along with it. In that case, Buium might elect to go the route of Connor Bedard. After his first two seasons in Chicago saw him put up point totals well below what most thought they’d look like, Bedard has chosen to bet on himself and play out the third year of his ELC before signing an extension with the Blackhawks. That seems to have paid off, as Bedard is on the cusp of scoring 30 goals and producing at an above-point-per-game clip while also taking massive strides in his two-way play.

The main difference here is that if Buium chooses not to sign this offseason and plays out the third year of his ELC, the maximum number of years the Canucks will be able to offer him next offseason is seven. That adds a very interesting dynamic to this conversation.

Buium might also look at what Quinn Hughes did (not the dipping out of Vancouver part) when he signed a six-year deal with the Canucks coming off of his ELC. The circumstances were a bit different then, of course, as the Canucks had too much bad money on the books to get to the cap hit that would have been required to lock Hughes up on an eight-year deal. That allowed Hughes to line up his first taste of unrestricted free agency when he’ll still be just 27 years old — AKA, right in the prime of his career.

For the Canucks, going to eight years and rolling the dice on Buium’s potential could be a great play in the long run, as with the rising cap, a contract that might have some sticker shock in years one or two could end up being one of the best bargains in the league should Buium reach his ceiling.

But as we wrote above, discussing the ins and outs of what an extension between Buium and the Canucks could look like is a story for another day.