Continuing the Minnesota Wild 2024 NHL Draft Target series with Denver University defenseman Zeev Buium.
Continuing the Minnesota Wild 2024 NHL Draft Target series with Denver University defenseman Zeev Buium.
Continuing the Minnesota Wild 2024 NHL Draft Target series, today we look at Denver University defenseman Zeev Buium.
Other than maybe Berkly Catton or Konsta Helenius falling to pick No. 13, Buium could be the steal of the draft if he were to still be available at pick 13.
Buium entered his freshman season projected to be a late first or early second-round pick.
That quickly changed after his incredible first season of College Hockey which saw him win the National Championship. Buium now projects to be a top-ten pick in this year's NHL Draft.
As you can tell with the first two draft targets we wrote about, the defensemen in this draft class are loaded. Whoever gets to draft Buium will get an extremely skilled defender who is a treat to watch in all three zones.
Buium, 18, should've been a finalist for the Hobey Baker award. He won the National Championship with Denver University and won a Gold Medal with USA at the 2024 IIHF U20 World Junior Championships. He had three goals and six points in seven games for USA.
The 6-foot defender started the year with the Pioneers playing good hockey but he was a force towards the end of the season. In his last 15 games, Buium had four goals and 12 assists for 16 points. He finished the season with 11 goals, 39 assists, and 50 points in 42 games.
Our Hockey News Writers Tony Ferrari and Ryan Kennedy both have Buium in the top ten for this upcoming draft. Ferrari has Buium at No. 5 and Kennedy has Buium at No. 10.
Maybe he falls to No. 13?
A lot of attention this year was on Michigan State freshman Artyom Levshunov and what he did and was doing for the Spartans but really, the attention should've been on Buium.
Levshunov is more physical than Buium is but Zeev has found out quickly that the faster he stops a rush or plays along the boards, the quicker he gets to showcase his offensive abilities.
Buium is a very good skater and moves quickly in transition. He played with Sean Behrens which turned out to be one of the best dpairs in College Hockey this year. Zeev shoots left, which is the side a lot of the Wild's defensemen in the organization shoot, but Buium played most of the season on the right side.
Whether you believe the whole, LHDs have to play the left side and vice versa for RHDs, Buium has shown he can play both sides without many issues.
It's hard to compare Buium to former NCAA players who are currently playing in the NHL today just because not a lot of them were freshmen in College during their draft year, but Quinn Hughes seems like a fair comparable for what Buium's ceiling is.
Using the Hockey Prospecting tool we can compare Buium to Hughes, which is shown in the image below. Buium's Star and NHLer Probabilities are almost in line with Hughes'.
It will remain to be seen if Buium can put up 70-80 points in the NHL like Hughes has but with his vision and offensive ability, 50-65 points in the NHL doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility for Zeev.
Hughes played two years at Michigan where he put up five goals in both years and had 29 points in his first season and 33 in his sophomore year. He finished his NCAA career with ten goals, 52 assists, and 62 points in 69 career games.
Like Hughes, Buium played for the US National Development Program but that was after he spent his first two years of high school at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep in Faribault, Minn. Safe to say Buium is familiar with Minnesota a bit.
Buium led all team defensemen with 40 points in 63 total games for the U.S. NTDP Under-18 Team in 2022-23 and quickly translated his offensive abilities to the College level.
He now projects to be a top-ten pick in this year's NHL Draft. One thing we have seen in recent years at the draft is sometimes teams have a player in mind that they want to draft and that usually allows players to fall in the draft. Buium is probably a guy who gets taken in the 5-10 range in the draft but I would imagine the Wild hope he's there at 13.
Considering one of the Wild's prospects Rieger Lorenz has been playing at Denver for the last two years, the Wild's scouting department likely saw a bit of Buium this year. Not to mention the 2024 NCAA Frozen Four was at the Xcel Energy Center as well.
Could you imagine Buium playing with Brock Faber for years to come with the Wild? A top-four of Jonas Brodin, Jared Spurgeon, Faber, and Buium. That sounds very promising.
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