Zeev Buium, top right, and Max Sasson, bottom right, talking to, left to right, Bik Nizzar, Satiar Shah and Josh Elliott-Wolfe of Sportsnet 650 Radio hosts at the JCC Sports Dinner, March 3. (photo by Kyle Berger)
Cheering for the home team is one of the simplest concepts in sports fandom. The players represent the city, wearing its name on their crest, and the fans give those players their cheers and emotional support.
For members of Vancouver’s Jewish community, there is even more of a reason to watch and cheer for the National Hockey League’s (NHL) hometown Canucks. Two current members of the team, Zeev Buium and Max Sasson, are part of a small fraternity of Jewish NHL players.
“One hundred percent,” Sasson answered when asked if it he was proud to represent the Jewish community in the NHL. “Some of the rinks, especially when we got Zeev, there will be signs written in Hebrew during the warms-ups, and that’s pretty cool. Some fans have interacted with me and say I’m an inspiration and stuff, and that means the world to me and my family, having Jewish players in the NHL and representing our community.”
Sasson, who was raised in Birmingham, Mich., where he had his bar mitzvah, said Jewish life, including Shabbat dinners with his grandparents, were a regular part of his childhood and something he still thinks about.
“My dad and I were talking the other day about how my first NHL goal was against [Boston’s star Jewish goaltender] Jeremy Swayman and it’s probably the only first goal ever in the NHL to be a Jewish guy on a Jewish guy,” he said.
Sasson’s pro hockey story is a bit unique, as he wasn’t drafted to the league like most NHL players are. A late bloomer, Sasson was scouted and then signed by the Canucks to an entry-level contract in 2023 after a couple of strong seasons with the Western Michigan Broncos.
He spent most of his first season with Vancouver’s AHL team, the Abbotsford Canucks, leading them to a Calder Cup Championship last season. This season, however, Sasson has spent most of the year with the big club, scoring 11 goals already, and was recently rewarded with a contract extension that will take him through the 2027/28 season.
“When you sit back and think about the journey, it feels really good,” Sasson said about where his pro hockey career currently stands. “Not having anything handed to me, doing it the hard way, getting cut by teams growing up, and even getting to college and not playing a bunch my first year. But I’ve always said I have belief in myself and, every day, I try to improve so that I’m better than I was the day before.”
Though Sasson isn’t thinking too far ahead, noting that goals and milestones get achieved through continual effort and practice, he does hope for a long NHL career beyond his contract. Then, perhaps, he’ll follow that up with a career in the JCC’s recreational hockey league? “I’ll hop in there for sure,” he said with a smile.
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Before joining the Canucks this season, 20-year-old defenceman Zeev Buium had already made waves around the Jewish hockey world as the first NHL player with Israeli parents.
His mom and dad, Miriam and Sorin, met in Israel when they were 16 and went through their military service together. They fell in love while living in Israel, before moving together to San Diego, Calif., when they were both 23.
“I think my parents just wanted to see what the American dream was all about,” Buium explained. “They came over with one suitcase with both their clothes in it and maybe $1,000, and they moved in with our close family friend’s cousin. My dad started his heating and air conditioning company, and it’s done really well. But they obviously love Israel and we talk about going back there all the time.”
Despite being raised in San Diego, Buium has maintained his own close relationship with Israel, as his parents took him and his brothers, Ben and Shai (a prospect with the Detroit Red Wings of the NHL), there every summer, until he was 15, to visit family and friends.
They also always found ways to keep their Jewishness in their hockey adventures.
In 2018, all three Buium brothers represented Team Orange County’s ice hockey team at the JCC Maccabi Games: Zeev and Shai played on the team and older brother Ben served as an assistant coach.
In the summer of 2024, shortly after being drafted in the NHL by the Minnesota Wild, Zeev was brought back to the JCC Maccabi world as a keynote speaker at the opening ceremony of the games in Detroit.
“It was very nerve-wracking,” Buium said of speaking in front of thousands at the ceremony. “I had never talked in front of that many people before. It was also cool to go back to see the ceremony again and it brought back memories of when I was there. [JCC Maccabi] was such a fun time in my life and getting to do it with my brothers too was so cool and such a fun experience.
“I always tell people,” he said of his JCC Maccabi experience, “if you get the opportunity to go, you gotta do it. It’s something you can’t miss out on.”
While Buium hasn’t had the opportunity to play hockey in Israel, he recalls watching his brother Ben play in the Maccabiah Games there in 2017, and he loves seeing the sport becoming more popular in Israel.
“It’s cool to see [hockey] growing there and, hopefully we can have more Jewish athletes and Jewish hockey players,” he said, noting that some of the Jewish hockey players in the NHL, like Edmonton’s Zach Hyman, have reached out to him as well. “The Jewish community is small and so is the hockey world – and you put them together and it’s even smaller,” said Buium. “So, it’s cool to run into those guys and share that together.”
Buium has a tattoo on his arm with the dates, written in Hebrew and based on the Hebrew calendar, of his previous hockey championships, though he admits he can’t speak the language as well as he’d like.
“I feel embarrassed speaking Hebrew because my accent is so bad,” he laughed. “I mispronounce words so much, but I try to keep up with it. Especially growing up, my parents’ English wasn’t great, so they would speak Hebrew to us a lot and we responded in English, so it helped all of us out. I’m glad that we never lost touch with understanding it.”
Less than a year after being drafted 12th overall at the 2024 NHL entry draft as his season with the University of Denver wrapped up, Buium was invited by the Wild to join the NHL club for the playoffs, ending his college career and beginning his professional one. He showed well in the 2025 playoffs, leading into his first full season as an NHLer for the 2025/26 season.
Referring to his transition to college and then the NHL as a “whirlwind” time in his life, Buium said he trusted himself, as well as the people close to him, to find his way through it all.
“I’ve always been where my feet are and focusing on what I need to do,” he said. “Everything went really smoothly those two years at Denver. I love that place a lot and it was hard to leave but I can’t pass up an opportunity like that, when Minnesota comes calling and telling you that you’re going to play in the playoffs. So, it was a special moment for me and for my family. It was cool to sit back that summer and reflect on everything that happened and went down, and just be appreciative and grateful for where we are.”
Continuing the whirlwind, 31 games into this season, Buium became the centrepiece player in a blockbuster trade that sent sure-fire future Hall of Famer Quinn Hughes from the Canucks to Minnesota. While Buium admits he wasn’t expecting the trade when it happened, he has embraced the opportunity to be part of a young, rebuilding Vancouver Canucks team.
“Minnesota is a very veteran team with a lot of older guys and a lot of experienced players,” he said, noting, “It’s a different atmosphere here, with younger players and a lot of us trying to prove ourselves and, obviously, there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs with young guys. But we know that, and I think it’s cool to be able to try to put all this together and become something special.”
Kyle Berger is Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver sports coordinator, and a freelance writer living in Richmond.