When the Vancouver Canucks take on the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night, Zeev Buium will have officially played more games as a member of the Canucks than he did with the Minnesota Wild.

It’s been a whirlwind of a season for the 20-year-old rookie defenceman. Starting the season on one of the NHL’s best teams, logging top unit power play time, and was one point shy of the points lead by a Wild defenceman. Then, his world was rocked when he was traded and forced to change teams mid-season for the first time in his hockey career.

At this point, Buium’s rookie season went from contending for a Stanley Cup with the Wild to a rebuilding Canucks team. And while his first few games in a Canucks uniform were exciting, ripping off that four-game winning streak would be the last time the club would win consecutive games to this point.

Fast forward to present day, and the Canucks are coming off a 6-2 loss to one of the best teams in the league, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Following the loss, once the Canucks skated off the ice and down the tunnel, two players remained on the bench, sitting side by side, staring blankly ahead at the empty sheet of ice: Zeev Buium and Tom Willander.

Buium described this moment as some time he took to soak everything in. He has a million things running through his mind as the game goes on, and wants to leave all of those emotions out on the ice so he doesn’t take the negative parts of his job home with him. In saying that, there’s a lot that a young defenceman like that can take from seeing how one of the top teams in the NHL plays.

“You see what a team that’s first or second in the league compared to dead last. You see the difference; the fight, the compete,” Buium told CanucksArmy. “To me, it was how connected they were. Everybody on that ice sheet knew where everyone was at all times. I think I had an experience like that in Minnesota, where I joined them in the playoffs. I was telling my brother ‘I don’t even have to look to pass. Like, I get the puck, and I’ve got [Marcus] Foligno screaming ‘hey, hey, hey’, and I throw it there. I trust him.

“I think that’s something that our team, like Fil Hronek, he’s unbelievable at communication. When you play with him, he’s always talking, so loud. Even if what he’s trying to explain to us is that it’s not the perfect play, if I’m telling him, ‘reverse, reverse,’ at least I know it’s going there; he knows it’s going there. So even if it bobbles or whatever happens, at least we know where it’s going to go.

“I think that’s a big piece of something we need to learn as a team. It’s something that’s hard; you go down 3-0 or 4-1, and you don’t want to talk. You want to feel sorry for yourself. You may want to do it yourself. But it’s about staying connected, staying positive. It sounds cliché, but you just have to be basic and simple in these moments.”

With just 66 NHL games under his belt to date (62 regular-season and 4 playoff), there’s going to be a learning curve as Buium adjusts to the pace and skill set at this level. Along the way, there will be mistakes, but there will also be flashes.

And eventually, with his previous prowess throughout his hockey career, it’s all going to click, and all the pieces of the puzzle will connect for him and the Canucks. But for now, it’s about being patient through this development process, understanding that the lows are going to be low, and maintaining a middle ground. Fighting through those mistakes and playing the right way as a team will help the team turn the corner.

“I think the biggest thing is that you want to push the pace, you want to try and create something,” Buium said. “I think there’s some shifts, some periods we’ve had as a team where it’s hard for all of us to generate or do the things we want to because we, you know, get disconnected. I think at the end of the day, you’ve got to find it within our group, and you’ve seen the last couple of games where it’s like, the times we are playing well, everyone’s connected, everyone’s buzzing, the forwards are going, the D are going, goalies are making saves, everything’s kind of just clicking together. I think if we just find more consistency with that, I think everybody will feel better.”

The word connected stood out in the conversation. Buium described the Lightning as being so tough to play against because they were so well connected, while also mentioning that some of the Canucks’ problems arise when they’re disconnected.

With so much change this season: a new head coach, different systems, and fresh faces in the door, friends out the door, that disconnect is a bit expected. With all those lineup changes, trying to form chemistry while also implementing a new system can be difficult for any player – let alone a rookie, who was traded halfway through the season.

Despite all those challenges, the league moves fast and won’t wait for anybody. It’s ingraining that winning mindset and maintaining that “care factor” when you’re losing that is keeping Buium’s confidence up through this season.

“I think it’s just human nature, honestly,” Buium admitted when asked about the team’s disconnect. “When you’re winning, it’s easy to be in a winning mindset. For me, my experience over the years, I’ve been on winning teams; we win at the end of the year every time. It’s easy when you’re in the mindset when you know you’re going to win. You have the confidence of knowing that there’s no way we lose this game. When you’re on this side of it, which I have been before, it’s easy to feel down on yourself, or you get scored on one or two times, you’re like, ‘Oh, here we go again.’

“I think our challenge right now, especially as a young group, is finding that care factor of not caring about getting scored on or what the score is. I think the Nashville game was a great example of us kind of fighting back. You know, we’re down 3-1; on another night, it might be 5-1 by the end of that third, but we come back and win the game. It shows that we have it in our group; we just have to consistently bring it out every night.

“It’s nice to know that we can do it. I think that’s the biggest thing. Personally, in your own game, you make little plays, sometimes that might not lead to much, maybe it’s not anything crazy, but it builds confidence in your game, knowing like, ‘Okay, I can do this. I can see the spot now. I can feel it.’ That just builds confidence when that moment is there to capitalize on it.”

It’s one thing to want to play more connected, but it’s difficult to have everybody pulling on the same rope in order to make it a cohesive five-man unit shift in and shift out. And according to Buium and his previous experiences, it’s more about laying the proper foundation in the locker room first, before that camaraderie translates to success on the ice.

“I really do think a lot of it is culture,” Buium stated. “Like my U17 year at NTDP, we won five games, we were the worst team ever. Seriously, the stats are out there. And then the next year, we were the best team of all time. We had the best power play, best PK, all of our centres had the best faceoff percentage, we had the most goals for, the least goals against, won the Championship at the end of the year, we won 14 straight games against College teams, which is unheard of.

“And it wasn’t a different team. It’s not like we became so much bigger and stronger the next year. I think the fact that we became a team, we became brothers, we actually cared for each other, we wanted to see each other succeed, you want to do it for the guy next to you. When you do all that, and you care so much about winning, like when I was at Denver, the biggest thing was every guy there I loved, the coaches I loved, everybody loved everybody. The biggest thing was we didn’t want to disappoint each other, and losing was disappointing.

“I think we need to get to that point. Right now it’s tough because I think everybody wants to do that, but at the same time, you’re young, you want to prove yourself, there’s a lot of other things going on. You know how it’s been here, a lot of things have gone on the last two years. I think now that that’s kind of settled down, we’re finding that in our team, you can see the culture shifting into something bigger and better and everyone’s on board.”

The culture – or lack thereof over the past few years – has been a talking point surrounding this team for some time now. But after the trade deadline, things began to change. The Canucks started to play a little tighter, their defensive coverage looked less chaotic, and players started showing that emotion after scoring a goal. Hockey looked fun again for the team.

Understanding that all the noise surrounding the trade deadline is behind them and that the players in the room are the ones they’re riding with throughout the final stretch of the season has sparked something in their recent play. And while it may not necessarily be one guy driving that bus, it’s been a group effort to help uplift the culture around the team.

“I think knowing that this is our group,” Buium shared. “Before the trade deadline, you don’t know who’s going to be a part of it and who’s not. I think that makes it harder because, you know, you might put so much effort into something and then you’re gone the next day or that guy’s gone the next day. I don’t think there’s been one specific person; I think it’s been the group, but I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the group pushing it together; the young guys doing their job, the older guys doing their job; not being a divided team between the older guys and younger guys. Just being one.”

As a young player who was just traded here in December, surrounded by plenty of long-term Canucks and NHL veterans, it’s not always easy to have a loud voice in the locker room. But given his past experiences, as he shared about his first year in the NTDP, Buium has dealt with a situation like this before. He’s been through the struggles of a losing season where they finished dead last, but was also part of turning that situation around and becoming Champions.

He now has the same opportunity in Vancouver.

For Buium, team morale and having that connection off the ice is just as crucial as what happens on the ice. What happens away from the rink is valuable time spent getting to know your teammates as people, separating that from who they are as players on the ice.

It’s so important to him that even as a teenager in the NTDP, he took matters into his own hands and hosted weekly team hangouts to build those off-ice relationships. It’s that turning your teammates into brothers philosophy that Buium is hoping to bring to the Canucks culture.

“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.”

As the season has gone on, we’ve seen pictures of Buium and Willander chatting on the ice, laughing at practice, and even chirping each other at Dice & Ice in February.

Both being rookie defencemen and so similar in age – 10 months apart – these two have quickly developed the chemistry and friendship off the ice that Buium has previously highlighted as being so important to him. Buium shared that the two of them get along so well because they have each other to lean on. And that while they understand that losing isn’t acceptable, they’re doing a good job finding peace with it and continuing to bring that energy and work ethic to the rink every day, with a goal of bringing a Stanley Cup to Vancouver one day.

“It’s been awesome. We’re both really motivated,” Buium said on his relationship with Willander. “We both care a ton about the game and getting better. I think it’s really cool to share passions with someone, and someone of his calibre, with how good he is as a player, how good he is as a person, it’s easy to get along with him. We bounce ideas off each other. There’s things he does out there that I’m not as good at, and there’s maybe things I do that he wants to get better at. So, it’s cool to bounce those ideas off each other.

“I just think we get along well. We both want to win a Stanley Cup. I think that’s the biggest thing. We want to see this city explode. That’s what you play for. I know Kevin Bieksa, and he always tells me, ‘You don’t even know, the city is just unbelievable when you’re winning.’ [Tom and I] talk about how great [the fans] treat us when we’re last in the league, imagine how great they’ll treat us when we’re making the playoffs and making pushes. I think we both have the same dreams and passions. I think we’re trying to lead in our own way. Being a young guy, you can’t be vocally as loud [in the room], but I think with our work ethic and showing the effort, I think that’s kind of the biggest thing we can do.

“We know that one day, we’re going to be older guys and we can bring it down to [the younger guys]. They see us working on the ice, and they think, ‘Okay, I need to be out there.’ Even for us now, if the older guys see us, or even the younger guys see all of us working, then all the older guys start doing it. Now everybody’s working and doing their thing. I just think that’s what’s been happening these last couple of weeks. Everyone’s kind of coming together and being on the same page with what we need to do. It’s a consistency thing. Just staying on top of it, even when things don’t go our way. We might be struggling, but there’s a lot of good pieces here. The older we get, the more experience we get, the better we’re going to be.”

It was a long, exclusive chat with Buium, but one thing this author took from the interview was that Buium gets it. Although he’s just 20 years old, he’s a proven winner at every level he’s played at, and is willing to be patient with the process to reach the level he wants to here in Vancouver.

What matters to Buium first and foremost is making those off-ice connections with his teammates. Building a relationship with the guys away from the rink is going to translate to results on the ice.

Buium’s driven leadership, shaped by his past experiences, is what the Canucks need as they mould the next winning culture in Vancouver.