NEWARK, N.J. – Former Anaheim Mighty Ducks coach Ron Wilson once told the story about calling into his office a couple of young players, Chad Kilger and Oleg Tverdovsky, to inform them that they had been traded to Winnipeg for Teemu Selänne.
“I’m trying to be serious and somber because they’re sad that they’re getting traded and going to Winnipeg,” Wilson said. “But the whole time I’m trying not to smile because all I can think is: ‘We’re getting Teemu Selänne!’”
Friday’s monster trade of Quinn Hughes wasn’t quite like that for the Vancouver Canucks.
If anyone was smiling it was Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin because he got Hughes, the superstar defencemen, in the four-for-one swap with Vancouver.
But Canucks coach Adam Foote admitted he felt a lot better about the trade when he learned upon the team’s arrival in New York on Friday that elite defence prospect Zeev Buium, projected to become a player similar to Hughes, headlined the haul coming back from the Wild.
“I had no idea,” Foote said. “And when I got off the plane and I heard, I was like, ‘Holy.’ I wasn’t excited to leave Huggy. I’m not happy to lose Huggy, but I’m real happy with the return.”
Foote said he has known Buium since he was 13 years old and attended a summer development camp for clients of Denver-based agent Kurt Overhardt. Foote worked as a development coach for Overhardt, checking in with young NHL players during the season and running camps in the summer for the agent’s younger prospects.
Buium was what every coach or teacher hopes for: a gifted pupil who wanted to learn and just got it, someone who could demonstrate to the group what was being taught.
“He was demonstrating a lot of my drills,” Foote explained. “I would do skating at first, and I would show them box-outs. He was in the younger group then; he wasn’t with the big boys. But he was just very coachable. He just did everything. He was a sponge. He was a great skater. You could tell him once … and he just got it.
“You can project if a kid is going to play in junior or college, but at age 13, no, I couldn’t project what he is doing now. But I saw him grow once he hit college. And I was like, yeah, he’s got a great opportunity to play (in the NHL).”
And now Buium is playing for Foote, in the NHL. And in Buium’s first Canucks practice here Saturday, he took Hughes’ place as the quarterback on the first-unit power play.
“There’s a lot of things that he did teach me that, you know, stuck with me until this point,” Buium said. “And I still think about them. So it’s really cool to come kind of full circle.”
New Canucks Buium, Liam Oghren and centre Marco Rossi practised at the Prudential Center and should play for Vancouver on Saturday against the New Jersey Devils, although Rossi was still listed on injured reserve despite skating between first-line wingers Brock Boeser and Jake DeBrusk.
Canucks winger Conor Garland was a teammate of Buium, who turned 20 on Sunday, when the United States won gold medals at the world championships in Sweden last spring to end a 95-year championship drought.
“Confident, in a good way,” Garland said of the prodigy. “I think before the semifinals game against Sweden, he came up to me, ‘I’ve never lost at anything.’ He’s like, ‘I have five gold medals. We’re going to win.’
“His dad was telling my dad the same thing. He’s like, ‘We’ve won everything, we’re fine.’ I was just nervous and he was confident as could be going out for overtime. He was the turning point for us in the quarterfinals game. He took over a shift, made a great play. So I was really impressed by him. When I saw his name in the trade, I was like, you know, that’s a really good piece. He’s going to be a good player for a long time.”
“I don’t know if I was that arrogant,” Buium smiled when asked about Garland’s anecdote. “Yeah, I think I probably said something along those lines. Up to that point, I hadn’t lost. Teams that I was on, we’ve won (but) it was just a joke.”
After winning a U.S. college hockey title with the University of Denver in 2024 – following his win with Team USA at 2023 world Under-18s and before his gold medal at the 2025 world junior tournament – Buium was drafted 12th overall by the Minnesota Wild.
The six-foot defenceman’s value has rocketed since then, so that Buium was not only the Wild’s top prospect but one of the very best prospects in hockey when Minnesota traded its prized rookie to the Canucks with Rossi, Ohgren and a first-round pick in June.
“It’s not the Stanley Cup,” Buium said of the Americans’ historic win last spring, “but I think when you play and get to play in those big games and those big opportunities and big moments, you learn how to handle yourself. You learn how to, you know, control the environment and the team, and you get that sense of the team that’s going to win versus the team that isn’t.
“You just have a sense when you know a team can win. And I think that’s what I’ve been fortunate enough to kind of have.
“I think when you can kind of fall back on ‘I’ve done this before, I’ve played good in these big moments, I’ve won these big games,’ you feel confident. You can kind of fall back on that when things might not be going as well, so I think it’s a good thing, especially early on. I think the next step is trying to bring that here and win a Cup.”
Buium has three goals and 14 points in his first 31 NHL games, and is also minus-five at five-on-five with an expected-goals-for of 44.7 per cent that was among the lowest on the Wild. One week removed from his teenage years, Buium obviously has much to learn about defending.
But his skill with the puck and, especially, his outstanding skating agility were evident in one practice with his new teammates. Buium was the difference-maker in the Wild’s trade offer – the world-class prospect who just wasn’t available to the Canucks from other teams.
Buium was shocked by the trade, but said the upheaval is easier to accept because it was Quinn Hughes for whom he was dealt.
“I think when you get drafted to a team, you fall in love with them,” he explained. “You fall in love with everything about it, and you want to be part of it. And you never think that those things are going to happen. But they do. It’s a business; I think we all know that. They couldn’t pass up a player like Quinn. And I also feel very fortunate that Vancouver felt strongly enough about me to put me in that (trade), and kind of say something about me, in a way.”
Later, he added: “When you’re in a trade for Quinn Hughes, you definitely could feel good about yourself.”
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Foote and the Canucks are happy to have him. But obviously, Vancouver players will miss Hughes, who was their captain and friend in addition to the best player in franchise history.
“It’s always tough, and especially when you get close with somebody,” Hughes’ long-time defence partner, Filip Hronek, said. “I think we became really good friends. So yeah, it sucks, but also it’s part of the business.”
“I don’t have any brothers, but we were pretty close,” Garland said of his one-year-old son’s godfather. “So day-to-day will be a little off for a little bit. The guys are giving me a hard time today, like, you know, (I will) be walking around the mall by myself. Like last night. . . I was rating all the right-handed defencemen in the league in my room by myself. That’s what we (Garland and Hughes) usually do together. Just argue over, you know, who would you take? He’s the greatest guy. Goes to a great team. But, you know, we’ve got to move on as a group. We got some really good pieces back.”
Canucks president Jim Rutherford has made it clear the Canucks are taking a step back to reload and get younger, but hopes the team will be back competing for a playoff spot within “a couple of years.”
“We kind of always knew that Huggy maybe would be leaving,” goalie Thatcher Demko said. “It’d be pretty naive to think otherwise. I have my contract. He’s where he is. I think we got a few good players out of it, so I don’t think this is, like, doomsday or anything. I’d say it’s more of a pivot than a breakdown.”
Ice chips
The Canucks were still working through Rossi’s medical status Saturday afternoon and will need to move another player off their roster to activate the centre from the injured list. Lukas Reichel went on waivers Saturday. . . Winger Nils Hoglander missed practice due to illness but Foote expects him to play on Sunday. But top centre Elias Pettersson, who skated on his own before practice and then was a partial participant with the main group, will miss a fourth straight game. . . Foote has no initial plans to name a captain to replace Hughes, but said Hronek will get an ‘A.’
How the Canucks practised
Forwards
DeBrusk-Rossi-Boeser
Bains-Kampf-Garland
Kane-O’Connor-Sherwood
Ohgren-Sasson-Karlsson
Defencemen
M. Pettersson-Hronek
Buium-Myers
Pettersson Jr.-Willander
Extras
Raty, Joseph
