West Notes: Buium, Canucks General Manager Search, Predators

Vancouver Canucks young star Zeev Buium won’t play for Team USA in the upcoming IIHF World Championships, Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK reports. 

The 20-year-old is no stranger to the international circuit in early stages of his career, and winning, at that. Buium helped the United States take home gold last year at the World Championships, their first such title in 92 years, with four points in eight games. That came after back-to-back gold medals at the 2024 and 2025 World Junior Championships.

Assuming today’s news to be the case, the skilled lefty will focus on resting up after the long grind of 76 NHL games in his rookie year. After being dealt to the Canucks, Buium’s ice time jumped nearly two full minutes, averaging 20:21 wearing the blue and green.

Despite facing the challenges of being on the NHL’s bottom-ranked team, Buium escaped with a commendable 49.3% corsi for at five-on-five, with over 60% of his zone starts on the attack, with some shelter in mind. With plenty of gold earned in the past, it’s a well deserved break for Buium who will set his eyes on another big step coming in 2026-27. 

Elsewhere across the conference:

• Also in Vancouver, Islanders Assistant General Manager Ryan Bowness was listed as a name to watch as a candidate for the team’s open General Manager position by Dhaliwal, and later relayed by Stefen Rosner of NHL.com. The 42-year-old, son of Columbus Blue Jackets head coach Rick Bowness, has ties to Jim Rutherford, having served in the Pittsburgh scouting department from 2016-2022. Bowness is just in his first year on Long Island, coming over after three years in the Senators organization. On the other hand, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet mentioned an internal candidate, Abbotsford Canucks general manager Ryan Johnson on yesterday’s edition of 32 Thoughts. Friedman speculates that Rutherford would make the recommendation for the 49-year-old after 13 years in the organization, and GM of their AHL affiliate since 2017-18. Johnson was a Canucks player himself from 2008-2010. 
• With exit interviews coming from various Nashville Predators players, Brooks Bratten, Senior Content Manager, wrote on the team’s reflection from a season which came up short, and their optimism ahead. Interestingly, Steven Stamkos described the expectation to stay competitive and push for the playoffs in 2026-27. Such idealism is normal for non-playoff teams in an offseason so fresh, but Nashville will be a team to watch this summer, with a new general manager coming in and ample evidence it’s time for bigger changes. Likely to miss another top 10 draft selection, of which they have just one since 2013 (Brady Martin, 5th, 2025), the Predators once again find themselves in a difficult, middling ground. Even the 36-year-old Stamkos’ 42 goals weren’t enough to move the needle, and a real shake up could be on the horizon under a new regime.