Manny Malhotra isn’t treating Zeev Buium’s early-season stumble like a crisis. For the Vancouver Canucks head coach, the 20-year-old defenseman is still exactly where a young player is supposed to be: learning on the job.
Buium has only one assist in 10 games this season, a modest start for a player the Canucks clearly view as a major part of what comes next. He signed an eight-year extension this off-season with an AAV of $9.38 million and was also added to the team’s leadership group, so the expectations around him are already heavy. Still, Malhotra said the noise around his usage and his production doesn’t change the club’s view of his trajectory.
“Well, you call it a shelter role; he's a 20-year-old defenseman learning the league," said Malhotra. "So, for all the words that I've heard thrown out there, demotion or shelter role, he's still learning his game.
He's learning the league. So, not something that we didn't expect to occur for a 20-year-old defenseman.
This is just a part of the growing process for him.”
That context matters because Buium has become a real conversation piece over the last few games, especially after Malhotra adjusted his d-pairing and moved the former 12th overall pick to the third pair. But the Canucks coach made it clear after practice on Monday that the organization is thinking beyond the immediate lineup shuffle.
“Potentially, that's a reason. But from our standpoint, we've made it very clear to him that we are focused on the long game.
You know, the day-to-day of what pairing you're on and how many minutes you're getting, we don't want to be short-sighted in that regard and put pressure there. He understands that we're focused on his overall growth for year 2, 3, 4, and 5, kind of thing.”
For a team in a rebuild, Buium’s development sits at the center of the whole project. If he comes along the way the Canucks believe he can, he profiles as a top-pair defender and a future leader once the team is back in playoff contention. For now, Malhotra and the organization are keeping the focus where they want it: on building Buium into that kind of player over time.
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