LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – APRIL 20: Zeev Buium #8 of the Minnesota Wild skates with the puck against the Vegas Golden Knights in the first period of Game One of the First Round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs at T-Mobile Arena on April 20, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Golden Knights defeated the Wild 4-2. (Photo by Candice Ward/Getty Images)
By Louis Keene
April 21, 2025
Zeev Buium took the ice yesterday for the Minnesota Wild, becoming the first NHL player born to Israeli parents and one of more than a dozen Jewish players to feature in a game this season.
He might also be the first in the league with a tattoo featuring Jewish calendar dates:
Zeev Buium showing off the tatoo on his left forearm. It’s the dates in Hebrew that he won gold at the World Under-18s, the World Juniors and the NCAA championship. pic.twitter.com/L7YulyXGzw
— Adam Kimelman (@NHLAdamK) June 8, 2024
“If I could be another Jewish hockey player in the NHL and pave the way for younger kids that are Jewish and show them it’s possible, then I’d be very happy and it’d be great for me and my family,” he said prior to last year’s NHL Draft.
Buium, a highly touted defenseman prospect picked 12th overall in that draft, logged 13 minutes, 23 seconds in the Wild’s 4-2 loss to the Las Vegas Golden Knights. He’d be the first to tell you that’s 13 minutes, 23 seconds more than his brother Shai — his former college teammate, and a prospect in the Detroit Red Wings farm system.
Here’s a few things to know about Buium.
Sports run in the family — but it wasn’t always hockey
His parents, Sorin and Miriam Buium (pronounced BOO-yum), immigrated in 1999 from Ashdod, a city in southern Israel, to San Diego.
Miriam played basketball professionally in Israel before working as a general manager in the sport. When Zeev’s older brother, Shai, asked to play hockey at the age of six, his mother flatly refused.
“Over my dead body,” she recalled in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune. She didn’t want them getting hurt — and she admittedly didn’t know much about the sport.
But the parents relented, and all three kids — Ben, Shai and Zeev — eventually joined a youth hockey development program run by the Los Angeles Kings. That meant Miriam driving 112 miles each way, three or four days a week for two years, to bring the boys to practice. The family eventually moved closer to LA to make the drive easier.
“Everyone says their mom is a rock star, but she really is,” Zeev told the Star Tribune. “She made everything feel like it was easy. But it wasn’t.”
The best offense is a good defense
Ben hung up his skates after high school, but the younger two brothers teamed up at University of Denver, where they won the NCAA Frozen Four championship in 2024.
Now both have their eyes on NHL stardom: Shai, 22, was drafted 36th in 2021. (“Yeah, there’s a little bit of a rivalry there,” Zeev said last year, in an interview with the National Collegiate Hockey Conference website.)
Hockey players can continue their college careers after they get picked, and Zeev, like Shai, had continued his. It was not until his signing with the Wild last week that his college career officially came to an end.
Both Buiums are known as offense-minded defensemen. As a freshman, when he was the second-youngest player in college hockey, Zeev (rhymes with “leave”) had 50 points (11 goals, 39 assists) and 41 blocked shots in 42 games. He followed that up with 48 points (13 goals, 35 assists) as a sophomore — a season that ended with him taking home the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) Player of the Year award.
Sorin, Miriam and Ben were all in attendance Sunday for Zeev’s debut.
“Just special,” he told The Athletic afterward. “I really don’t know what else to say. It was just pretty amazing. To see my family there, without them I wouldn’t be here. It was unreal.”
Suiting up on October 7 — and sitting out on Yom Kippur
Shai and Zeev were college teammates on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its devastating attack on Israel. They had a game that night — Zeev’s college debut.
As Miriam updated them on the day’s news, she also tried not to stress them out too much.
“We knew the major details, but the biggest thing was she said she’s pretty sure all our family is safe and healthy,” Zeev said last year in an interview. “So that was the biggest thing for us, making sure that the people we love are safe.”
Eight family members eventually flew out from Israel to watch him get drafted.
Zeev also said he fasts every year on Yom Kippur and sits out any practices or games that fall on the holiday; once, when Shai had skipped the fast in high school to practice, he ended up breaking his ankle on the ice.
It became a cautionary tale for the youngest Buium. “We don’t mess with that,” he said.
JTA contributed reporting.
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