Zeev Buium's new contract with the Vancouver Canucks is already reshaping how rival GMs pay for young defencemen.
Elliotte Friedman said Wednesday night that the deal is going to ripple through the league fast, and two names came up right away.
Simon Edvinsson in Detroit. Alexander Nikishin in Carolina. Both blue liners, both about to feel the weight of Buium's price tag.
Buium put together a real rookie campaign in Vancouver. Twenty six points, six goals and twenty assists across seventy six games, with ten power play assists mixed in.
Here's the catch nobody wants to say out loud. The Canucks finished dead last in the league this season at 58 points, a 25-49-8 record with a minus-100 goal differential.
Paying top dollar for a piece of that blue line before it's proven anything on a winning team is a bet, not a sure thing.
New coach Manny Malhotra was brought in this summer to fix exactly that mess, and Buium's deal is now part of the foundation he has to build around.
Nikishin's holdout adds real tension in Carolina
Edvinsson posted 25 points for Detroit this season, nine goals and sixteen assists, while running a plus-12 rating on a Red Wings blue line that's been shaky lately.
Detroit stumbled to a 2-6-2 mark over its last ten games and enters this stretch on a three-game skid under Todd McLellan.
Nikishin's situation carries more urgency. He remains unsigned by the Hurricanes, and his file lists him day-to-day because of the contract dispute, with his availability for the start of the season still in question.
That's not a small thing for a team that finished 53-22-7 with the second-best record in the league.
Nikishin set new highs last season with 33 points, eleven goals and twenty two assists over 81 games, plus a plus-18 rating and four power play goals.
Buium's number now becomes the comparable both sides reach for at the table. It's a lot like one house sale setting the price for the whole block, except the block runs from Vancouver to Raleigh.
Whether Nikishin signs before Carolina opens camp, or this turns into a longer standoff with Rod Brind'Amour's group, is still very much up in the air.
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Should the Hurricanes match Buium's number to lock up Nikishin before camp?
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