The wave of big contract extensions that started with Kirill Kaprizov’s historic deal has continued through the early part of the season, and the most recent one might have laid a pathway forward for Minnesota Wild general manager, Bill Guerin. On Monday, the Montreal Canadians signed the reigning Calder Trophy winner, and their cornerstone blueliner, Lane Hutson, to an 8-year, $70,800,000 contract that breaks down to an annual average value of $8.85 million. Could young Zeev Buium, he of four regular season NHL games, have a similar deal in his future?
The Wild have been no strangers to locking up young players on long-term deals. During Guerin’s tenure Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, and Joel Eriksson Ek have all put ink to paper to sign multi-year extensions that have skipped the bridge contract route favored by many. So it would be no surprise to see the 20-year-old Buium follow in their footsteps.
The young blueliner is off to a strong NHL start with five points in his first four NHL games, putting him on a pace to exceed the 66 points (6 goals, 60 assists) that Hutson put up last season in his rookie campaign. It is worth noting that all of Buium’s points so far have come on the power play where he is part of the Wild’s first unit. Granted, that just means he’s fitting in well with his teammates as Minnesota has gone three games in a row without finding the net at even strength.
Buium will get his share of 5v5 points in due time, and will have the benefit of being sheltered a little more than Hutson was last season when Montreal tossed him into the deep end and let him play almost 23 minutes a night. Through the first week of the season, Buium has averaged almost 21 minutes a game, but a whopping 5:48 per game of that has come on the power play. By comparison, Hutson was only averaging 2:53 of power play time a night last season.
There is a long, long way to go in the season, and just because he started off hot, doesn’t mean that Buium will keep the production going all season long. He will hit a wall at some point. The Wild might even consider sending him to Iowa if he struggles for an extended period of time, but the early results put him on a similar path to Hutson.
Because he still has two seasons left on his entry-level deal, Buium isn’t eligible for an extension this season. The byproduct of that is that it is going to cost him at least one year on a max-length deal. With the new CBA kicking in next season, the longest contract the Wild will be able to offer him will be seven years. Could that mean his AAV runs a little higher? Possibly. Still, a seven-year deal in the neighborhood of $8.5 to $9 million could be feasible for Buium.
Despite the truckloads of money Guerin has handed out this summer to Kaprizov and FIlip Gustavsson, there is still room under the cap for his young blueliner. With the rough estimate of the salary cap increasing to $113,500,000 in 2027-28 (the first year his new deal could go into effect) the Wild will have just over $43 million in cap space with 11 players under contract.
They will also be at a point where some familiar veteran names will be at the end of the deals, most notably captain Jared Spurgeon, whose $7.5 million cap hit ends following the 2026-27 season. By then he’ll be heading into his age-38 season. If the Wild feel like he can still help them, and if Spurgeon isn’t ready to retire, whatever extension he signs will likely be for a much smaller cap hit. That would account for the bulk of Buium’s raise.
Other veterans that likely won’t be on the roster by the time an extension starts would be Mats Zuccarello ($4 million), Vlad Tarasenko ($4.75 million), and Zach Bogosian ($1.25 million). The Wild are in a nice spot financially where they have some larger veteran deals coming off the books in time for their prospects like Buium, Danila Yurov, and Liam Ohgren to step into the roles. The math is working out in their favor to keep them in the organization.
Again, signing Buium to a long-term extension is something that is a down-the-road situation, but Hutson’s recent deal is definitely a road map for both the player and the Wild to follow.