BUFFALO — Zeev Buium arrived at the NHL Draft Scouting Combine with, perhaps, the best label a young player can carry into the event: ‘Winner.’
Certainly, the combine and draft itself is always going to be about tangible skill and, to be sure, Buium has that in spades. But it never hurts to have a little confetti still stuck between your toes and following a season in which Buium won World Junior Championship gold with Team USA and an NCAA Frozen Four title with Denver — to say nothing of being a World Under-18 champion in 2023 — one aspect of his pre-NHL resume is bulletproof.
“It’s pretty cool,” Buium said on Friday after several days of interviews with NHL clubs in Buffalo. “I was fortunate to be on two really good teams. It was two awesome experiences and it feels really good to have won both of those.”
And let’s be clear; it’s not like Buium was some passenger on these title-winning squads. At the WJC, Buium’s three goals were the most by any defenceman in the tournament. At the Frozen Four, he faced an old friend in the final — a guy who’s going to go first overall at the NHL Draft in three weeks — and beat him with a thrilling 2-1 overtime victory. Macklin Celebrini has known Buium dating back to the time they were prep-school teammates at Minnesota-based Shattuck-St. Mary’s, and he couldn’t believe what he saw at the Frozen Four when his Boston University lined up versus Denver with everything on the line.
“He’s a great kid, great player,” Celebrini said of the California native. “I saw him at the end of the year, I saw him at world juniors; we went to Shattuck together, kind of grew up a little bit. To see how he’s been able to progress the past couple years and to see the player he is today, I was blown away when I saw him at the Frozen Four. I felt like he was the best player on the ice.”
In terms of what type of player the six-foot, 183-pound Buium is on that ice, think Quinn Hughes and adjust a little for hyperbole. The 2005-born D-man — his December birthday prevented him from being selected at the 2023 draft — notched 11 goals and 50 points as an NCAA freshman this year to lead everybody at his position.
Buium — whose older brother, Shai, was also on the championship Pioneers team and is a 2021 second-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings — knows offence is his calling card. That said, under coach David Carle — who guided him at both Denver and on the Team USA bench at the WJC — Buium is determined to round out his game and be the kind of player who can be sent over the boards in every situation.
“Just my ability to defend different kinds of players and just the consistency of my defence,” he said when asked about where he made strides this year. “I want to be a guy who can play the big moments at the end of games whenever we need to kill a play.”
Whether all this adds up to the left-shooting Buium being the first defenceman off the board at the Sphere in Vegas remains to be seen, especially given the intense competition in this draft that’s saturated with high-end blue-liners. One who isn’t here, Russian Anton Silayev, is a six-foot-seven behemoth who moves well and likely has teams dreaming of a Victor Hedman-type presence. There’s also a handful of premier guys who are in Buffalo, like right-shot offensive wizard Zayne Parekh and two-way force Sam Dickinson.
Then there’s the guy who sat to Buium’s right at the podium on Friday and also lines up as a much-coveted right-shot D-man in the NCAA, Artyom Levshunov.
The six-foot-two Belarussian just finished his second season in North America, having logged a year of USHL hockey with the Green Bay Gamblers before joining Michigan State in the NCAA.
Also a late birthday — Levshunov was born Oct. 28, 2005 — the 18-year-old originally had his sights set on major junior hockey, but had to shift his plans in the wake of Russia invading Ukraine early in 2022 and the Canadian Hockey League banning Russians and Belarussians from being part of the circuit’s import draft.
“I wanted to play in the CHL before the USHL, but unfortunately it was cancelled for [Russians and Belarussians] so I had an option to play in the USHL and I had an option to go to college [after that]. I just wanted to go chase my dream.”
He’s done that and more while adjusting to life in North America. Levshunov is about to be the highest-drafted player ever from Belarus and could well go No. 2 if the Chicago Blackhawks — who dined the youngster on Thursday night in Buffalo — wish to pair a potential No. 1 defenceman with last year’s first-overall pick, centre Connor Bedard.
“We’ll see,” Levshunov said. “For me to be drafted into the NHL it will be very cool and any team will be good for me.”
And, like Buium, he’ll likely be fantastic for that squad, too.